Investigation of Deoxygenation of Rapeseed Oil over Raney Nickel and Ni/SiO2−Al2O3 Catalysts

The objective of this research program was to develop a method of removing oxygen from rapeseed oil in order to prepare the petroleum-comparative hydrocarbons under relatively mild conditions. Rapeseed oil was deoxygenated at various temperatures (220−300 °C) and pressures (15–70 bar) using different amounts of 66 % Ni/SiO2 − Al2O3 and Raney Ni catalysts (2–20 %) in a laboratory batch reactor over the time period between 1 and 6 h. Reaction products contained hydrocarbons, saturated mono-, di- and triglycerides, and carboxylic acids as the main components. The yield of hydrocarbons increased significantly with the increasing amount of the catalyst and/or reaction duration. The influence of temperature and pressure was also investigated