At present, isoctanoic acid production methods can be generally divided into two kinds: one is isoctanoic acid production with isoctanoic acid or isoctanoic acid as raw materials; Isoctanoic acid, the other is octanol as raw material to produce isoctanoic acid, the first method has the advantages of reasonable use of raw material, relatively moderate reaction conditions, easy to large-scale continuous production. However, the first method is suitable for the production of large chemical industry with the intermediate product isoctanaldehyde, and the production of isoctanoic acid by this method is far from meeting the market demand. As aldehydes are intermediate process of large chemical industry, there is no commercial product supply, therefore, if the production of isoctanoic acid without large chemical industry, can only use another production of isoctanoic acid with octanol as raw material. There are many ways to produce isoctanoic acid from octanol as raw material, but all of them have high production cost, large investment, high raw material and energy consumption, serious equipment corrosion, low product yield, low yield, high public cost, difficult to form large-scale production, and not suitable for industrial production.

Preparation methods include the following: 1. Potassium permanganate oxidation method: iso-octanol in the presence of NaOH, potassium permanganate as an oxidant to prepare iso-octanoic acid. Disadvantages: poor oxidation catalytic effect, low product yield, long process, side reactions, large raw material consumption, toxic equipment corrosion, high cost, low product performance index, so there is no possibility of large-scale production.

2, nitric acid oxidation method: this method in addition to nitric acid as oxidant, but also with ammonium vanadate as catalyst. Disadvantages: nitric acid has strong corrosivity, high anticorrosion requirements for equipment, large investment in equipment, and in the reaction process released harmful gas NO, easy to produce esterification, must be hydrolyzed to obtain carboxylic acid, increase the complexity of the process, so it is not easy to achieve large-scale production.

3, high pressure dehydrogenation oxidation method: isooctanol and sodium hydroxide reaction under high pressure, dehydrogenation oxidation to produce 2-ethylcaproate sodium, and then after sulfuric acid acidification until isooctanic acid. Disadvantages: The reaction requires reaction at high temperature and pressure, difficult operation, serious equipment corrosion, strict requirements on equipment, increased engineering investment, not easy to achieve large-scale production.

4, atmospheric pressure dehydrogenation oxidation method: this method is based on high pressure dehydrogenation oxidation method, using metal oxide as catalyst, isoctanol and sodium hydroxide under atmospheric pressure dehydrogenation oxidation to isoctanoic acid. Disadvantages: This method has long process, low product yield, difficult recovery of catalyst, high raw material and energy consumption, low product performance index, and no possibility of large-scale production.

5, catalytic dehydrogenation esterification method: iso-octanol under the catalysis of metal oxide, reaction temperature 180~210℃, dehydrogenation reaction, the formation of dio-octanol. Disadvantages: This method has two processes of esterification and saponification, which reduces the utilization rate of iso-octanol. At the same time, the cost of the product is increased due to the distillation process. This method is rarely used in industry.

6, there are electrolytic oxidation method, ultrasonic method, but because of the high production cost, the product performance index is low, so there is no possibility of large-scale production.