ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Highly selective and stable ZrO₂–Al₂O₃ for synthesis of dimethyl carbonate in reactive distillation

Ning Tao, Jidong Liu, Yajin Xu, Yuchen Feng, Yiyan Wang, Wenrui Liu, Hefang Wang, and Jianhua Lv

School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China

E-mail: liujidong@hebut.edu.cn

Received: 20 January 2020  Accepted: 2 May 2020

Abstract:

Abstract

Reactive distillation is a strengthening process, which is widely used for the transesterification of propylene carbonate and methanol to synthesize dimethyl carbonate. In this paper, suitable catalysts of ZrO₂–Al₂O₃ solid solutions were prepared for distillation column. The structure–property correlations were characterized by XRD, XPS, N₂ adsorption–desorption, CO₂-TPD, and NH₃-TPD. The introduction of Al³⁺ replaced Zr⁴⁺ in zirconia forming a homogeneous solid solution, which generated strong basic sites and increased weak acid sites of the catalyst. It has shown excellent catalytic performance for the synthesis of dimethyl carbonate due to the synergistic effects of the acid–base sites. At the same time, the key parameters of the reactive distillation process were studied, and under optimized reaction conditions (feed alcohol ester ratio = 4, reflux ratio = 5:1, height of reaction section = 0.25 m, liquid space velocity of propylene carbonate = 0.26 h⁻¹), the propylene carbonate conversion and selectivity to dimethyl carbonate were 98.14% and 99.96%, respectively.

Graphic abstract

Keywords: Solid solutions; Transesterification; Reactive distillation; Dimethyl carbonate

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-020-01185-3

Chemical Papers 74 (10) 3503–3515 (2020)