In this paper, a homemade apparatus was built in order to study the formation of carbonaceous deposits on stainless steel, in order to model the fouling by oil vapours of gas/water heat exchanger used in energy production systems fed with natural gas. Oil vapours were shown to form, at the surface of stainless steel, a varnish layer very difficult to remove, as shown by TPD. One solution to this fouling was shown to be the oxidation of oil vapours by a catalytic system. Pt/alumina and to a lower extend Pd/ceria-alumina catalysts exhibited interesting performances, but we demonstrated that they can be deactivated by the oil vapours, which form a carbonaceous deposit (coke) at their surface. Nevertheless, Pt/alumina can be regenerated by increasing the oxygen amount up to 20 vol% or so during a limited duration and at moderate temperature (450 A degrees C). In order to take benefit of such a regenerative process, it was vital to use non degraded oils, because vapours originating from an aged oil (treated at 300 A degrees C in air) were not likely to be much oxidised to CO2 and H2O and therefore coke formed at catalyst's surface under these conditions cannot be removed by the regenerative treatment under oxygen excess.