Activated Carbon, Carbon Nanofibers and Carbon-Covered Alumina as Support for W2C in Stearic Acid Hydrodeoxygenation

Carbon materials play a crucial role in sorbents and heterogeneous catalysis and are widely used as catalyst support for several reactions. This paper reports on an investigation of tungsten carbide (W2C) catalyst on three types of carbon support, namely activated carbon (AC), carbon nanofibers (CNF) and carbon-covered alumina (CCA). We evaluated their activity and selectivity in stearic acid hydrodeoxygenation at 350 °C and 30 bar H2. Although all three W2C catalysts displayed similar intrinsic catalytic activities, the support did influence product distribution. At low conversions (50%), W2C/CCA presented the highest C18-unsaturated/C18-saturated ratio in product distribution, which appears to be linked to W2C/CCA having the highest ratio of acid/metallic sites.