Ruthenium catalyst for fatty alcohols production

The current work is devoted to the study of fatty acid carboxylic group hydrogenation in order to obtain fatty alcohols which are the valuable products for fine chemistry. The catalysts based on the ruthenium impregnated into hypercrosslinked polystyrene (HPS) were used in the process. The influence of the type of the support and metal loading on the yield of hydrogenation products was evaluated. Three different types of HPS were used as the catalyst supports non-functionalized, modified with amino- and sulfonic groups. The catalyst based on HPS modified with sulfonic groups showed good selectivity towards the formation of stearic aldehyde, however, was found to be unstable under the reaction conditions. Ru embedded on the HPS modified with amino groups showed a high yield of stearyl alcohol (86.5%) at high substrate conversion (90%). The analysis of the results showed that Ru-containing catalysts can be concerned the permissive in the carboxylic group reduction of fatty acids. 1% Ru/MN100 showed was found to be the most effective catalyst remaining its activity at minimum 5 multiple reuses.