Mesoporous Silica Sol-Gel as Catalyst for the Synthesis of Alkylpolyglucosides

Abstract

The synthesis of alkylpolyglucosides involves condensation of decanol with dextrose in the presence of mesoporous silica sol-gel as a catalyst. In this study, mesoporous silica was produced using sol-gel technique by converting tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) into silica. The mesoporous silica was characterized using BET surface area measurement and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy surface analysis. The specific BET surface area was 794m2/g. From the XPS analysis, the Si2p binding energy is 103.7 eV while the O1s binding energy is 532.8eV indicating the formation of Si-O-Si bond which attributed to SiO2. Mesoporous silica has been found efficient to be solid catalyst for synthesis alkylpolyglucosides and easy to be separated. The reaction was carried out 8 hours at 110°C-120°C under vacuum condition. The mass determination of alkylpoluglucosides has been achieved by ESI LC-MS/MS (ToF) positive-mode giving a mass peak at m/z = 343.21 corresponding to [M++ of alkylmonoglucoside peak at retention time 11.0 min.