Catalytic hydrogenation of soybean oil promoted by synthesized Ni/SiO2 nanocatalyst

In this contribution we are presenting a simple impregnation method to synthesize 25 wt% of nanocrystalline Ni/SiO2 catalyst. The obtained powder was structurally characterized by using powder-XRD, TGA, DSC, SEMEDAX and particle size analyzer (BET) techniques. The synthesized catalyst was utilized for catalytic hydrogenation of soybean oil using Parr reactor and also comparative study of generated catalyst with commercially available Ni catalyst. Results indicate the generated 25 wt% of Ni/SiO2 catalyst exhibited good catalytic activity, thermal stability and selectivity for catalytic hydrogenation of soybean oil as compared to commercially available catalyst by reducing the formation of trans fat by 20-25%.