Nanocatalyst-Assisted Facile One-Pot Synthesis of Glycidol from Glycerol and Dimethyl Carbonate

Elrasheed Elhaj; Huajun Wang; Mohd Imran; Salah Eldeen F Hegazi; Mohamed Hassan; Mubarak A Eldoma; Jabir Hakami; Waseem A Wani; Anis Ahmad Chaudhary

doi:10.1021/acsomega.2c02381

Nanocatalyst-Assisted Facile One-Pot Synthesis of Glycidol from Glycerol and Dimethyl Carbonate

ACS Omega. 2022 Aug 29;7(36):31778-31788. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.2c02381. eCollection 2022 Sep 13.

Authors

Elrasheed Elhaj^{1

2}, Huajun Wang^{1

3}, Mohd Imran⁴, Salah Eldeen F Hegazi⁴, Mohamed Hassan⁴, Mubarak A Eldoma⁴, Jabir Hakami⁵, Waseem A Wani⁶, Anis Ahmad Chaudhary⁷

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan430074, P. R. China.
² Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering and Technical Studies, University of El Imam El Mahdi, P.O. Box 209, Kusti27711, Sudan.
³ Hubei Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry and Service Failure, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan430074, PR China.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Jazan University, P.O. Box 706, Jazan45142, Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Jazan University, P.O. Box 114, Jazan45142, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, Government Degree College Tral, Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir192123, India.
⁷ Department of Biology, College of Science, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU), Riyadh11623, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

This paper reports the facile one-pot synthesis of glycidol via the transesterification of glycerol with dimethyl carbonate using KNO₃/Al₂O₃ nanoparticles as supporting catalysts. KNO₃/Al₂O₃ nanoparticles were prepared by the impregnation method. XRD and FT-IR analyses indicated an interaction between KNO₃ and Al₂O₃ that enabled the decomposition of KNO₃ during the process and resulted in the formation of KAl₅O₈, the Al-O-K group, and K₂O. K₂O was recognized as one of the active sites of the catalyst. SEM results indicated the high performance of the supporting catalyst, as the catalytic activity depended on both the number of catalytic active sites and their distribution. The yield of glycidol was 64% at the expense of 95% glycerol under moderate reaction conditions (120 min, 1 atm, and 70 °C). The nanocatalyst prepared at 800 °C with a loading amount of 30% KNO₃ was the most efficient for the synthesis of glycidol. Furthermore, the catalyst was recovered and reused without a loss of efficiency even after the fourth recycling. A plausible mechanism for the one-pot synthesis of glycidol has also been proposed.