Abstract: In this paper, palmitic acid and sodium N-methyl taurine were used as raw materials to directly synthesize sodium palmitic methyl taurine. The structure of the product was characterized by Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer and liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometer. Series of metal oxides (zinc oxide and magnesium oxide), metal chlorides (magnesium chloride and stannous chloride) and boronic acids (methylboronic acid, phenylboronic acid and 2-chlorophenylboronic acid) were screened for their ability to catalyze the reaction. The effect of catalysts on the yield and selectivity of sodium palmitic methyl taurine was studied systematically. The results showed that the yield of sodium palmitic methyl taurine increased significantly during the early stage of the reaction, and remained barely changed after 4 h. Boronic acids performed better than the other catalysts tested. The reaction kinetics was studied in detail using 2-chlorophenylboronic acid as the catalyst with a loading amount of 4% relative to palmitic acid. The concentration of N-methyl taurine was determined at different time points with different temperatures. According to the experimental data, the reaction rate constant, reaction order, reaction activation energy and pre-exponential factor were calculated to obtain an expression of the reaction rate. Under the optimal condition, a yield of sodium palmitic methyl taurine of 97.5%, and a selectivity of 98.4% were obtained. With an excess of palmitic acid, an activation energy of 68.0 kJ/mol and a pre-exponential factor of 1.6×10¹⁰ h⁻¹ were obtained.