Benzenesulfonic Acid - an Green Efficient Esterification Catalysts for Continuous Synthesis of n-propyl Acetate

Zhijun Xia

doi:10.37358/rc.21.2.8423

Abstract

The esterification of acetic acid and n-propanol catalyzed by benzenesulfonic acid and its derivatives in the batch and continuous rectification tower was studied, in order to develop a new effective and green catalyst instead of the oxidative and corrosive sulfuric acid. A series of the comparison system with sulfuric acid was build for the targeted and fast evaluation of catalysts. The results showed that the catalytic esterification activity of p-phenolsulfonic acid and p-toluenesulfuric acid is very closed to sulfonic acid in the continuous rectification tower. Furthermore, the stability test for continuous esterification with p-toluenesulfuric acid presented that the high yield of n-propyl acetate could maintain 50 hours and stability. Therefore, p-phenolsulfonic acid and p-toluenesulfuric acid could be prospective substitutes for sulfuric acid for the continuous synthesis of n-propyl acetate in the rectification tower.

Highlights

IntroductionSulfuric acid has been widely used as the catalyst in esterification. it is extremely oxidative and corrosive, leading to the formation of side reaction and the corrosion of equipment [1]
As we know, sulfuric acid has been widely used as the catalyst in esterification
We developed an green efficient and stable catalyst for continuous synthesis process of n-propyl acetate

Summary

Introduction

Sulfuric acid has been widely used as the catalyst in esterification. it is extremely oxidative and corrosive, leading to the formation of side reaction and the corrosion of equipment [1]. It requires additional neutralization and separation steps with the catalyst being disposed as salts, which generally increases processing costs and contributes to strong acid contaminative source [2] To overcome these drawbacks, the use of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts, such as p-toluenesulfuric acid [3,4,5], acidic ionic liquids [6, 7], acid resins [8,9,10], heteropoly acids [11, 12], solid acids [13, 14] and molecular sieves [15,16,17] have been reported. The continuous synthesis process of n-propyl acetate have been used to enhance the reaction efficiency and save energy consumption, compared to the traditional batch reaction [18,19,20,21]

Methods

Results

Conclusion