Selective Synthesis of Ethyl Methyl Carbonate via Catalytic Reactive Distillation over Heterogeneous MgO/HZSM‐5

Abstract Ethyl methyl carbonate is selective synthesized from dimethyl carbonate and ethanol via catalytic reactive distillation ( RD) over heterogeneous MgO/HZSM‐5. It is shown that 2.3%MgO/HZSM‐5 catalyst has high catalytic activity with 99.4% conversion of ethanol ( EtOH) and 98.1% selectivity to EMC, in a RD column. The prepared catalysts is characterized by XRD, SEM, N 2 adsorption‐desorption CO 2 ‐TPD and NH 3 ‐TPD. The high performance of this catalyst is attributed to high basicity. According to the results of CO 2 ‐TPD, this catalyst total basicity is 1.72 mmol/g. In order to optimize the catalytic reaction, the reaction conditions, such as amount of catalyst, reflux ratio and EtOH LHSV were studied.