The kinetics of catalytic hydrogenation of rosin on Raney nickel catalyst was investigated in a FYX-2G high-pressure agitated autoclave at 423—453K and 4.0—7.0 MPa.The external diffusion effect was eliminated by adding 200# solvent oil

increasing rotational speed and improving the type of stirrer so that the reaction was in the region under chemical kinetics control.Then kinetics data were collected.The results showed that hydrogenation of abietic-acid on Raney nickel catalyst to abietenoic-acid and abietanoec-acid is a parallel reaction.A suitable reaction mechanism was selected from 17 probable reaction mechanism models

i.e.the absorption of atomic hydrogen with reaction between atomically absorbed hydrogen on catalyst surface and the main component of rosin abietic-acid could be the controlling step.The activated energy of abietenoic-acid and abietanoec-acid were 47.18 kJ8226;mol-1 and 106.35 kJ·mol-1

respectively.