Paraffin Oxidation Studies

The oxidation of paraffin has been studied with keen interest by several workers from all over the world; as oxidation leads to the introduction of various functional groups in hydrocarbon chains. Processes involving the Oxidation of Paraffin’s in the liquid phase, using air or oxygen are of great importance to industrialized economies because of their role in converting petroleum hydrocarbon feed stocks such as alkanes, olefins and aromatics into industrial organic chemicals important in the polymer, petrochemicals ,cosmetics and detergent industries. The oxidation leads predominantly to the formation of secondary alcohols consisting of a mixture of all possible isomers with the same number of carbon atoms in the molecules as the initial hydrocarbons. The secondary alcohols which are oxidation products of paraffin exhibit excellent hydrolytic, oxidative and color stability, because of the nature of their branching. These alcohols have lower melting points than straight chain alcohols of corresponding length, while retaining their high temperature stability. The oxidation of paraffin wax to fatty acids is carried out in temperature range 110 0C- 140 0C. Paraffin oxidation which is carried out by ALFOL, Oxo-processes, are high temperature, high pressure processes which utilize expensive catalysts, making them energy intensive as well as expensive. The maximum conversion achieved yet by existing processes is 15% for a batch time of 4 hours. A cheaper alternative in this article has been studied, in which paraffin Oxidation has been carried out in a foam reactor at moderate temperature and pressure with suitable catalyst , the output of the products is increased up to 62%.