Tunable Transesterification of Dimethyl Carbonate with Ethanol on K2CO3/Al2O3 Catalysts: Kinetic Modeling

The light alkyl carbonates are indispensable co-solvents of electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries. In this work, the tunable transesterification of dimethyl carbonate (DMC) with ethanol to co-produce ethyl methyl carbonate (EMC) and diethyl carbonate (DEC) was investigated based on an efficient catalytic system with the solid alkaline catalyst. It was found that the gamma- Al2O3-supported K2CO3 catalyst exhibited high activity for the transesterification reaction, with a tunable feature for the selectivities of EMC and DEC by changing the space velocity and feed ratio of DMC to ethanol at the temperature between 120 and 150 degrees C. According to the results of characterizations and activity tests, a synergistic mechanism was proposed. The reaction kinetic model was also established, which displayed good agreement with the experimental results.