Preparation of Ti Material Supported SBA-15 Functionalized with Sulfonic Acid Environmental Friendly Catalyst: Application for Esterification Process

Abstract

Kinetics of catalytic esterification between propionic acid and n-butanol has been studied in a batch reactor by using a Ti-supported SBA-15 catalyst with sulfonic acid. The synthesized catalyst is used to test the efficacy of catalyst for esterification reaction. The SBA-15 acidity is tied to incorporation of Ti and -SO3H groups through and the use of Si/Ti with Si/S molar ratios. The results are mesoporous materials with a typical hexagonal structure of the Ti SBA-15 and wide areas and high pore diameters that are operated with sulfonic groups. The addition of SBA to Ti leads mainly to catalytic materials with Bronsted and Lewis acid sites. Ti SBA-15 is the most effective catalyst for sulfonic acid, with the highest consents of Lewis acid sites and deactivation resistance and low hydrophilicity. The effect of temperature, catalyst amount, and molar ratio on reaction kinetics has been studied. The conversion of propionic acid is found to be 91% at 115°C at a 2 : 1 ratio of n-butanol to propionic acid molars with 2% of sulfonic acid supported Ti SBA-15. The Eley-Rideal kinetic model is used to fit the experimental data. The activation energy and kinetic factor are found to be 29.63 kJ mol–1 and $k_o$ 0.549 L2 g-1 mol-1, respectively.