Catalytic decarboxylation of naphthenic acid with metal oxide catalyst

I&EC 43

Jong-Ho Park, jongho@kier.re.kr1, Hyun-Young Oh1, Chang Hyun Ko, chko@kier.re.kr1, Kwang-Bok Yi1, Sang-Sup Han1, Soon-Haeng Cho1, Jong-Nam Kim1, and Nam-Sun Nho2. (1) Chemical Process Research Center, Korea Institute of Energy Research, 71-2 Jangdong yuseonggu, Daejeon, 305-343, South Korea, (2) Fuel Process Research Center, Korea Institute of Energy Research, 71-2 JangDong Yuseonggu, Daejeon, 305-343, South Korea
Naphthenic acid is a complex of carboxylic acids (various low-molecular-weight fatty acids believed to have cyclopentane ring mainly) present in acid crude oils. They often cause serious problems such as pipeline corrosion in processing crude oils. As oil price has rapidly increased recently, utilization of acid crude oil has became rather active across the world. Thus, finding an economic way to reduce naphthenic acids from crude oil turned out to be very important for oil refinery industries to make the cost balanced. Among the technologies, catalytic decarboxylation of naphthenic acids seems promising and may provide a solution for that purpose. It has been reported that various metal oxides are active toward the decarboxylation. However, their reaction kinetics and long term stability have not been reported in the literature. In this study, activities of alkaline earth metal oxides, prepared in various ways, and their long term stabilities were compared and the possible causes of the deactivation of the catalysts were investigated using surface characterization.