Kinetics of non-catalyzed hydrolysis of soybean oil in near-critical water

Kinetics of non-catalyzed hydrolysis of soybean oil in near-critical water was systematically studied in the temperature range from 180℃ to 240℃ and at pressure of 10MPa. The results show that hydrolysis of soybean oil in near-critical water is a typical self-catalyzed reaction to produce aliphatic acids and glycerol. The reaction rates increased dramatically with the increase of the temperature. The activation energy of the hydrolysis is 43.2 kJ/mol evaluated by a second-order kinetics equation.