Solvent effect on the process of fatty alcohol production

In current work the investigation of the influence of solvents on fatty acid carboxylic group hydrogenation was carried out to produce fatty alcohols with a high yield. As the result, it was found that the use of hexane and toluene allows obtaining stearyl alcohol from stearic acid with the yield 98% and 99% respectively. Cyclohexane allows reaching of high substrate conversion but rather low selectivity due to the behavior of rehydrogenation reaction with the formation of hydrocarbon. Dodecane due to its high viscosity allows reaching of rather high selectivity; however substrate conversion in this case does not exceed 80%.