The imidazole ionic liquid was chemically grafted on SBA-15 to continuously catalyze carbon dioxide to prepare propylene carbonate

The massive emission of carbon dioxide has led to the greenhouse effect. The preparation of propylene carbonate from carbon dioxide and propylene oxide can alleviate the environmental problems caused by carbon dioxide. In this paper, the supported ionic liquid (NMImBr-SBA-15) was prepared by chemical grafting with SBA-15 as the carrier, and NMImBr-SBA-15 was characterized by XRD, N2 adsorption-desorption, TGA, TEM and FT-IR. The effects of operating conditions on product yield and selectivity were investigated in a batch reactor, including CO2 pressure, catalyst dosage, reaction time and reaction temperature. The continuous catalytic performance of NMImBr-SBA-15 was systematically studied in a fixed bed reactor, which has guiding significance for the reaction design and scale-up process. In addition, the possible reaction mechanism was deduced by DFT calculation.