An Acidic Layered Clay Is Combined with A Basic Layered Clay for One-Pot Sequential Reactions

A Ti4+-exchanged montmorillonite (Ti4+-mont) and a hydrotalcite (HT) are strong solid Brønsted acid and base, and these two clay catalysts could be used in a single reactor without neutralization of active sites. Because the Ti4+-mont have active acid site in the narrow interlayers, the base sites of large HT particles show no interaction with the acid sites. A variety of acid and base reactions, such as esterification, acetalization, deacetalization, aldol reaction, Michael reaction, and epoxidation, proceeded using both the Ti4+-mont and the HT in a single reactor.