Direct Synthesis of Glycol Ethyl Ethers from Glycol with Modified HZSM-5 as Catalyst

Abstract Glycol ethyl ethers possess many excellent properties and are widely used in paint industry, chemical industry and so on. In this paper, glycol ethyl ethers were synthesized from glycol with the modified HZSM-5 as catalyst. The modified HZSM-5 was characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS, BET and NH3-TPD. The results showed that the modification did not change the structure and morphology of HZSM-5, sulfur was adsorbed on the surface of catalyst and strong acid sites appeared. The influence of ratio of the reactants, reaction temperature, reaction pressure, and time on the yield and selectivity was studied. The optimal reaction condition was performed with the molar ratio of glycol and ethanol 1:4 under 7MPa pressure at 453K for 4 h. Under these conditions, the conversion of glycol was 68.12%, and the selectivity of glycol ethers could be up to 98.61%.