Development of a green catalyst for production of synthetic banana flavoring based on low transition temperature mixture through numerical optimization, LCA assessment and sustainability metrics

The transition to cleaner production of chemicals to abate the prolonged environmental impairment has been an emerging concern worldwide, calling for alternative cost effective and greener process routes. The present study witnesses the ecofriendly preparation of synthetic banana flavoring or Isoamyl acetate (IAA) catalyzed by a low transition temperature mixture (LTTM) comprised of abundantly available natural resources. The chosen LTTM exhibited bifunctional properties of highly active acidic catalyst as well as an excellent solvent media which could phase out the product as an independent layer after the reaction assuring simpler downstream processing and direct recycle of the catalytic media for subsequent runs. Numerical optimization, executed to obtain the optimal process parameters using the Box-Behnken design yielded a maximum conversion of 99.81%. The LTTM catalyzed reaction kinetics is deciphered through the pseudo-homogeneous model inclusive of the system non-ideality estimated through the UNIFAC model and the thermodynamic functions of the reaction were also evaluated to aid the realistic process design. A comparison of the proposed route and that using sulfuric acid as catalyst has been performed through a cradle to gate life cycle assessment (LCA) using the Simapro 9.1 software for the laboratory production of 1 kg IAA which revealed that the adopted green approach decreased the damage to ecosystem and resource availability by 48.8% and 30.2% respectively. Furthermore, the environment profiling of the conventional and intensified reaction pathways using green metrics also indicated the LTTM mediated production of IAA to be extremely promising that paves the path for sustainable chemical industries.