China Nonferrous Metallurgy

Dimethyl carbonate is widely used in the green chemical industry for its unique physical and chemical properties and poison-free and damage-free characteristics. In the test, the catalytic reaction performance of synthetic DMC via transesterification of ethylene carbonate (EC) and methanol in the presence of MgAl₂O₄ spinel and ZnO (Zn-MgAl₂O₄) catalyst is explored and the influence of ZnO addition and reaction condition for yield of dimethyl carbonate via reaction of methanol and EC is studied. The result suggests that: The catalytic activity achieves the optimum condition with 15% of ZnO; when the reaction temperature is 170 ℃ , the catalyst dosage is 4 wt%, feed ratio of n (EC)∶n (methanol) is 1∶10 and the reaction time is 4 h, the yield of DMC can achieve 95.2%. The conclusion can be drawn that acid position, basic position and specific surface area influence the catalytic activity obviously through analysis on catalysts with characterization methods of SEM, XRD, BET, CO₂-TPD and NH3-TPD.