Engineering Commons^™

The Stereospecific Hydrogenation And Dehydrogenation Of Rosin And Fatty Acids, Edward O'Brien

LSU Master's Theses

Tall oil is a byproduct of the standard wood pulping process in the paper industry. It is primarily made up of C:18 fatty acids, rosin acids and a minor fraction of neutrals. Normally, tall oil is further distilled into fractions and then hydrogenated or dehydrogenated into different products. In this project, three heterogeneous catalytic methods of producing byproducts of various distilled tall oil fractions were examined at lower temperatures and pressures than the industry norm in an attempt to develop cheaper production processes. Reactions were conducted in stirred batch reactors of different sizes and product compositions were analyzed primarily by …