A Facile Approach to Develop Rice Husk Derived Green Catalyst for One-pot Synthesis of Glycerol Carbonate from Glycerol

Abstract

AbstractThe profitability margin of biodiesel production hampering due to surplus amount of glycerol with the low market price. Thus, developing an alternative route highly demanded for the conversion of glycerol into value-added chemicals. In the present manuscript, green synthesis route was explored by utilizing rice husk derived catalyst. The catalytic properties of the prepared catalyst were investigated by using various characterization techniques. The basic strength of the catalyst was influenced by varying the calcination temperature (200 °C to 500 °C) as well as active metal (cerium) loading (5 wt. % to 20 wt. %). The present investigation revealed that 10 wt. % Ce on Na2SiO3 catalyst calcined at 400 °C exhibited the moderate basic sites of 13.89 mmol/g, which showed potential catalytic activity for the transesterification of glycerol to glycerol carbonate under optimum condition: 92 % glycerol carbonate yield and 98 % glycerol conversion. The catalyst stability study revealed that the catalyst could be reused up to four consecutive cycles without an appreciable drop in catalytic activity. The kinetics of the reaction was also studied, and the activation energy was calculated as 23.80 kJ/mol.