Effective synthesis of diethyl carbonate over Mg–Y composite oxides via alcoholysis of ethyl carbamate

Abstract

Diethyl carbonate (DEC) was synthesized from ethanol and ethyl carbamate (EC) over Mg–Y composite oxides with excellent yield. Mg–Y composite oxide calcined at 450 °C demonstrated excellent catalytic activity and 70.3% yield was obtained. Note that the production capacity of catalysts (PCC) reached 5987 mg_DEC g_cat⁻¹ h⁻¹ under the optimized conditions, which was far higher than that reported in previous literature reports. Furthermore, other carbamates such as methyl carbamate (MC) and butyl carbamate (BC) could be also successfully converted into the corresponding dialkyl carbonates. The catalyst could be easily recovered four times under identical conditions. The origin of the catalytic performance was studied using various characterization techniques, and the TPD results showed that the MgY-450 catalyst exhibited more accessible moderate and strong basic sites, which was beneficial to expressing excellent catalytic performance.