The Olefin Reaction between Crude Palm Oil Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (CPO FAME) and Ethylene Using Grubbs II Catalyst

Renewable materials derived from vegetable oils are now widely developed for obtaining green polymers. One of the applications of those polymers is in the field of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) where the polymers are put in the injection wells to increase water viscosity resulting in higher efficiency of oil production. Indonesia is very rich in crude palm oil and therefore, it was chosen as the starting material for polymer synthesis. The objective of this work is to prepare the monomer first, by doing the olefin metathesis reaction between crude palm oil FAME (fatty acid methyl ester) and ethylene. The reaction was carried out using a Grubbs II catalyst in order to obtain methyl 9-decenoate which is used later as the monomer for EOR application. The resulting product was characterized using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy as well as Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). Based on the functional group analysis, it was found that methyl 9-decenoate has successfully been synthesized.