Partial Hydrogenation of Edible Oils without Formation of Trans-Fatty Acids Maj-Britt Macher For poster click here Background : Large amounts, 20 million ton, of vegetable oils are hydrogenated each year, mostly for the production of margarine and shortenings. In the traditional process the poor solubility of hydrogen in oil leads to a lack of hydrogen at the catalyst surface. This causes positional and cis- / trans- isomerization of fatty acids. From a medical point of view the trans- fatty acids are strongly questioned and their formation should be minimized. The project : We add propane to the oil and hydrogen. By that, a substantially homogeneous near- or supercritical mixture can be attained. Under these conditions the transport resistances at the catalyst surface are minimized. In this way extremely high reaction rates are reached and the product contains only small amounts of trans- fatty acids. In this project the reaction conditions (pressure, temperature, composition, catalyst) will be optimized. Ph.D Theses Macher, M-B. (2001) Supercritical Hydrogenation of Vegetable Oils. PhD Thesis; Chalmers University of Technology: Gothenburg, Sweden Page maintained by svh@harrod-research.se Updated: 2001-05-10