Ozonative epoxidation of ethylene: A novel process for production of ethylene oxide

Abstract

Here we report a novel reaction for ethylene oxide production using catalytic reaction of ethylene with ozone at room temperature. A key aspect of this path is boosting selective oxygen coverage on the surface of the catalyst which enables achieving high ethylene oxide selectivity and maintaining high conversion. Comparing the structural changes of the catalyst before and after the reaction suggested that the process allows facile generation of the catalytic active sites and selective oxygen species on the Ag/Al2O3 catalyst. With this novel process and under kinetically controlled regime, single-pass ethylene conversion of 98% and selectivity of 56% were achieved at room temperature. The low apparent activation energy of 22.1 kJmol-1 indicated the feasibility and high rate of this reaction at room temperature. This approach is believed to deliver a new class of processes for other oxygen insertion reactions.