Molybdenum Carbide-Catalyzed Conversion of Renewable Oils into Diesel-like Hydrocarbons

In the paper, we report for the first time that the conversion of renewable oils into diesel-like hydrocarbon mixtures can be realized on molybdenum carbides with high activity and selectivity. The molybdenum carbide catalyst exhibited much better resistance to leaching than noble metals and could be reused consecutively for sixteen times without deactivation. Mechanism investigations indicated that molybdenum carbide and palladium showed different reaction selectivities and it was speculated that the level of difficulty in acyl-to-alkyl rearrangement of surface acyl intermediates on molybdenum carbide and palladium resulted in the different product selectivity.