Hi, you should not need a diode your power supply will be polarized +ve & -ve your problem is you are trying to drop 44 volts which creates a lot of heat, if your voltage was a bit lower you could have used a LM317 or similar the best you could input to these would be 32vdc its a weird voltage drop to are trying to use my suggestion is to try to get hold of a NUD4011 http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/NUD4011-D.PDF
this should handle your voltage drop