Transesterification of Dimethyl Carbonate with Ethanol To Form Ethyl Methyl Carbonate and Diethyl Carbonate: A Comprehensive Study on Chemical Equilibrium and Reaction Kinetics

Abstract

This article studies the consecutive transesterification of dimethyl carbonate with ethanol to form ethyl methyl carbonate and diethyl carbonate. The chemical equilibrium and reaction kinetics of this system are investigated experimentally and theoretically. To enhance the reaction rate, the homogeneous catalyst sodium ethoxide was applied. Molar-based and activity-based chemical equilibrium constants were calculated from experimental results, and their temperature dependence was described using the van't Hoff equation. An activity-based kinetic model that considers the temperature dependence of the reaction rate constants with the Arrhenius equation was derived.

Reactive Distillation for Multiple-Reaction Systems: Optimisation Study Using an Evolutionary Algorithm

“…In one of our previous articles, we found that a small amount of water brought in by the chemicals reacts with the catalyst sodium ethoxide to form sodium carbonate (Keller et al, 2011a). The molar fraction x cat of the homogeneous catalyst sodium ethoxide inside the column should always be higher than x cat,min = 4·10 -4 mol/mol to compensate for its consumption.…”

“…The second step is the transesterification of EMC with EtOH to form DEC and MeOH (R2). In our previous work, we found that sodium ethoxide is a suitable homogeneous catalyst to enhance the reaction rate (Keller et al, 2011a). The catalyst sodium ethoxide was used to experimentally determine the chemical equilibrium and reaction kinetics of the transesterification of DMC with EtOH.…”

“…To consider the reaction rates in the balance equations, a kinetic model was derived based on experimental reaction kinetic data. Details of the experimental setup, the experimental results and the derived kinetic model can be found in the publication of Keller et al (2011a).…”

“…To enhance the reaction rate, sodium ethoxide was used as a homogeneous catalyst (Keller et al, 2011a). Moreover, we have already developed a nonequilibrium-stage model that has been successfully validated against the experimental data (Keller and Górak, 2013).…”

Phenomenological kinetic model of the synthesis of glycerol carbonate assisted by focused beam reflectance measurements

“…The second model constitutes another potential kinetic model that considers partial first order for both components, as previously proposed in the literature for a similar transesterification reaction between DMC and ethanol in the presence of sodium ethoxide [38].…”