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Pure Appl. Chem., 2012, Vol. 84, No. 3, pp. 675-684

http://dx.doi.org/10.1351/PAC-CON-11-06-04

Published online 2011-09-30

Synthesis of unsymmetrical organic carbonates catalyzed by a sulfonic acid-functionalized zirconium phosphonate*

Jinliang Song, Binbin Zhang, Suxiang Wu, Qian Wang, Honglei Fan, Zhaofu Zhang and Buxing Han*

Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

Abstract: Synthesis of unsymmetrical organic carbonates by transesterification of various alcohols with diethyl carbonate (DEC) is an interesting topic in green chemistry. In this work, we synthesized a kind of zirconium phosphonate functionalized with pendent N-SO3H group by the reaction of ZrOCl2·8H2O with N,N-bis(phosphonomethyl)-sulfamic acid, which was formed from sulfamic acid through a Mannich-type reaction. The functionalized zirconium phosphonate was characterized by Fourier transform/infrared (FT/IR), N2 adsorption and desorption, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques, and was used as the heterogeneous catalyst for the synthesis of unsymmetrical organic carbonates by transesterification of various alcohols with DEC. It was demonstrated that the catalyst is very active and selective for the reactions, and very high yields of the desired products could be obtained. In addition, the catalyst could be easily recovered and the decrease in catalytic activity and selectivity was minor after three-fold usage. The mechanism for the transesterification reactions is discussed.
*Pure Appl. Chem. 84, 411–860 (2012). A collection of invited papers for the IUPAC project 2008-016-1-300 “Chlorine-free Synthesis for Green Chemistry”.