Continuous process of oxidative cleavage of vegetable oils

A continuous process for the oxidative cleavage of vegetable oils containing triglycerides of unsaturated carboxylic acids, for the obtainment of saturated carboxylic acids, comprising the steps of:

• a) feeding to a first continuous reactor at least a vegetable oil and an oxidizing compound in the presence of a catalyst capable of catalyzing the oxidation reaction of the olefinic double bond to obtain an intermediate compound containing vicinal diols;
• b) feeding to a second continuous reactor said intermediate compound, oxygen or a compound containing oxygen, and a catalyst capable of catalyzing the oxidation reaction of said diols to carboxylic groups in the presence of water, to obtain a product comprising saturated monocarboxylic acids (i) and triglycerides containing saturated carboxylic acids with more than one acid function (ii);
• b-i) separating an aqueous phase from the product obtained as output from step b), thereby obtaining an organic phase;
• c) transferring the organic phase of the product of step b-i) to an apparatus suitable to separate the saturated monocarboxylic acids (i) from the triglycerides having more than one acid function (ii);
• and
• d) hydrolyzing in a third reactor said triglycerides (ii) to obtain glycerol and saturated carboxylic acids with more than one acid function.