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Sustainable Oxidative Cleavage of Vegetable Oils into Diacids by Organo-Modified Molybdenum Oxide Heterogeneous Catalysts

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society

Abstract

Exploiting vegetable oils to produce industrially valuable diacids via an eco-friendly process requires an efficient and recyclable catalyst. In this work, a novel catalytic system based on organo-modified molybdenum trioxide was synthesized by a green hydrothermal method in one simple step, using Mo powder as precursor, hydrogen peroxide, and amphiphilic surfactants cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and tetramethylammonium bromide (TMAB) as capping agents. The synthesized materials were first characterized by different techniques including XRD, SEM, TGA, and FT-IR. Interestingly, various morphologies were obtained depending on the nature of the surfactants and synthetic conditions. The synthesized catalysts were employed in oxidative cleavage of oleic acid, the most abundant unsaturated fatty acid, to produce azelaic and pelargonic acids with a benign oxidant, H2O2. Excellent catalytic activities resulting in full conversion of initial oleic acid were obtained, particularly for CTAB-capped molybdenum oxide (CTAB/Mo molar ratio of 1:3) that gave 83 and 68% yields of production of azelaic and pelargonic acids, respectively. These are the highest yields that have been obtained for this reaction by heterogeneous catalysts up to now. Moreover, the CTAB-capped catalyst could be conveniently separated from the reaction mixture by simple centrifugation and reused without significant loss of activity up to at least four cycles.

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Acknowledgements

ASE thanks the Department of Chemical Engineering at Laval University for welcoming him as a visiting scientist during his stay in Canada. The authors would like to thank the industrial partners (Oleotek and SiliCycle Inc.) for stimulating discussions and comments.

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Author notes

  1. Aimé Serge Ello and Amir Enferadi-kerenkan contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Laval University, Quebec, G1V 0A6, Canada

    Aimé Serge Ello, Amir Enferadi-kerenkan & Trong-On Do

  2. Laboratoire de Chimie Physique, Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny de Cocody, 22 bp 582, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

    Aimé Serge Ello & Albert Trokourey

Authors
  1. Aimé Serge Ello
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  2. Amir Enferadi-kerenkan
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  3. Albert Trokourey
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  4. Trong-On Do
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Trong-On Do.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Funding

This study was funded by the "Programme Canadien de Bourses de la Francophonie” (PCBF) and the Nature Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through an INNOV-UC grant.

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Ello, A.S., Enferadi-kerenkan, A., Trokourey, A. et al. Sustainable Oxidative Cleavage of Vegetable Oils into Diacids by Organo-Modified Molybdenum Oxide Heterogeneous Catalysts. J Am Oil Chem Soc 94, 1451–1461 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11746-017-3047-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11746-017-3047-2

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