A novel route to synthesis of glycerol dimethyl ether from epichlorohydrin with high selectivity

The effective utilization of glycerol, a by-product in the production of biodiesel, into useful chemicals is desirable from the viewpoint of green chemistry. With this in mind, a novel and highly selective route to synthesizing glycerol dimethyl ether (2,3-dimethoxy-1propanol), a potential fuel additive, from glycerol was proposed. This route uses both glycerol and methanol as starting materials, takes epichlorohydrin as an intermediate product, and utilizes HCl as a recycling agent. Hereinto, the key step of this route is the reaction between epichlorohydrin and methanol to produce 2,3-dimethoxy-1-propanol which is identified by GC-MS, ESI-MS, IR and NMR. The thermodynamics of this reaction was analyzed and the result showed that the thermodynamics of a reaction was favorable and a high product yield was expected. The effect of various parameters such as kind of acid catalyst, molar ratio of epichlorohydrin to methanol, reaction temperature and reaction time was studied. Among various acid catalysts investigated, the acidic ionic liquid [HSO3-b-N(CH3)(3)]HSO4 exhibited the highest activity and selectivity: conversion of epichlorohydrin of 100% and selectivity of 2,3-dimethoxy-1-propanol of 99% at 393 K, 10 h, an initial pressure of 0.1 MPa and a molar ratio of catalyst: ECH:CH3OH of 0.01: 1: 5. After the reaction, [HSO3-b-N(CH3)(3)]HSO4 was separated by vacuum distillation and then reused for the next cycle directly. The results showed that the product selectivity remained at about 94% but the conversion of epichlorohydrin dropped to 75% after being used five times. Subsequently, a reaction mechanism for the synthesis of 2,3-dimethoxy-1-propanol from epichlorohydrin and methanol was proposed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.