SnO nanoparticles on graphene oxide as an effective catalyst for synthesis of lubricating ester oils

Abstract

In this paper, nanosized SnO was deposited on graphene oxide (GO) by adopting hydrothermal technique to fabricate a new composite material SnO@GO, which was characterized by TEM, BET, XPS, XRD and FE-SEM. The SnO@GO composite exhibits excellent catalytic performance for esterifying fatty acids and trimethylolpropane at stoichiometric ratio. The yield of resulting polyol esters could reach 99%. Additionally, the SnO@GO composition can be recycled for 6 cycles without obvious deactivation. The outstanding catalytic performance was attributed by the active Lewis acid of SnO and the increase of specific surface area with the loading of SnO onto GO.