Study of catalytic activity of a polymer‐supported Ce catalyst for the synthesis of biofuels and β‐amino alcohol derivatives under ambient condition

Abstract

ABSTRACTA novel mesoporous cerium‐incorporated anthranilic acid binded chloromethylated polystyrene (PS‐AN‐Ce) has been developed by functionalization of chloromethylated polystyrene with anthranilic acid in DMF medium, followed by grafting of cerium on its surface using CeCl3·7H2O. The synthesized PS‐AN‐Ce has been characterized by FESEM, EDAX, AAS, FTIR, UV–Vis, TGA, and N2 adsorption–desorption isotherm. The synthesized material is stable up to 376 °C and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area is 40.12 m2 g−1. PS‐AN‐Ce showed excellent catalytic effectiveness with high conversion rate and high TOF in the synthesis of β‐amino alcohol derivatives and esterification of fatty acids in a short reaction time. In addition, the synthesized catalyst is easy to remove from the reaction mixture by centrifugation as it is a heterogeneous catalyst in origin and can be reused up to six times without any major loss of its catalytic activity. Also leaching limit of the synthesized catalyst is studied in different reaction cycle which implies that leaching of cerium from its polymeric support is negligible to consider. The extremely dispersed and sturdily bound Ce sites in the Ce‐incorporated mesoporous polymer could be responsible for the observed high catalytic activities. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019, 136, 47650.