PROCESS FOR THE PRODUCTION OF FATTY ALCOHOLS BASED ON VEGETABLE FATS AND OILS BY FRACTIONATION

摘要

The invention concerns a method of producing fatty alcohols with an iodine number between 20 and 110 from vegetable oils, the alcohols consisting essentially of unsaturated fatty alcohols or mixtures of saturated and unsaturated fatty alcohols of the general formula (I): R1OH, in which R1 is a saturated or unsaturated straight-chain or branched-chain alkyl group with 8 to 22 carbon atoms. Using prior art methods, the triglycerides contained in the vegetable-oil raw materials are (a) decomposed under pressure into the constituent fatty acids and optionally esterified with methanol or (b) transesterified to give the fatty-acid methyl esters and (c) the fatty acids or fatty-acid methyl esters are hydrogenated to give fatty alcohols. The method is characterized in that the fatty acids, the fatty-acid methyl ester s and/or their hydrogenation products are fractionally distilled and the first runnings taken from the distillation, the end product having an iodine numbe r from 20 to 110. The invention also concerns fatty alcohols produced from vegetable oils having an iodine number from 20 to 95 and the use of fatty alcohols produced from vegetable oils in the manufacture of washing, rinsing and cleaning agents as well as hair-care and body-care agents.