Selective Synthesis of Ethyl Methyl Carbonate via Catalytic Reactive Distillation over Heterogeneous MgO/HZSM‐5.

Ethyl methyl carbonate is selective synthesized from dimethyl carbonate and ethanol via catalytic reactive distillation (RD) over heterogeneous MgO/HZSM‐5. It is shown that 2.3%MgO/HZSM‐5 catalyst has high catalytic activity with 99.4% conversion of ethanol (EtOH) and 98.1% selectivity to EMC, in a RD column. The prepared catalysts is characterized by XRD, SEM, N2 adsorption‐desorption CO2‐TPD and NH3‐TPD. The high performance of this catalyst is attributed to high basicity. According to the results of CO2‐TPD, this catalyst total basicity is 1.72 mmol/g. In order to optimize the catalytic reaction, the reaction conditions, such as amount of catalyst, reflux ratio and EtOH LHSV were studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]