Synthesis of glycerol carbonate from glycerol and dimethyl carbonate over DABCO embedded porous organic polymer as a bifunctional and robust catalyst

摘要

A large surplus of glycerol from the rapidly growing biodiesel industry has led to the conversion of glycerol into higher value-added products being of great industrial importance. In this paper, a promising route for the synthesis of glycerol carbonate from glycerol and dimethyl carbonate is described using DABCO (1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane) embedded porous organic polymer as an efficient and robust catalyst. The porous catalyst with base sites and hydrophilic units (monoquaternized DABCO) was facilely synthesized through a one-pot radical copolymerization of divinylbenzene and vinyl functionalized DABCO monomer. By simply varying the mass ratio between divinylbenzene/DABCO monomer, the surface area, pore volume and surface wettability of the catalyst can be easily adjusted. Results of activity evaluations indicated that the catalyst with high surface area and excellent amphiphilicity exhibits much higher activity than other samples due to the enhanced accessibility of catalytic sites and mass transfer efficiency. Under the optimum reaction conditions, a 0.75?mol% catalyst loading is sufficient for excellent yield of glycerol carbonate in 60?min. Moreover, the optimized catalyst also shows excellent reusability and could be reused up to 13 consecutive recycles without obvious deactivation in activity.