The traditional industrial process for hydrogenation of benzoic acid to cyclohexane-carboxylic acid (CCA) has drawbacks of low-activity and fast deactivation of the Pd/C catalyst due to the poisoning of CO arising from the decarboxylation of CCA. A novel rapidly quenched skeletal NiCrFe promoter (RQ NiCrFe) is developed for the methanation of CO to harmless CH4. Evaluations in bench-scale autoclave and in traditional industrial equipment verified that RQ NiCrFe was very, effective in promoting the activity of the Pd/C catalyst in the hydrogenation of benzoic acid. It order to solve the catalyst recycle and separation problem introduced by RQ NiCrFe. the industrial process was modified by incorporating a hydraulic cyclone and a magnetic separator to the separation unit. The modified process showed merits of lower costs of catalyst and operation, higher productivity, and better product purity than the traditional Process. (C) 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 55: 192-197. 2009