Tunable Transesterification of Dimethyl Carbonate with Ethanol on K₂CO₃/Al₂O₃ Catalysts: Kinetic Modeling

The light alkyl carbonates are indispensable co-solvents of electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries. In this work, the tunable transesterification of dimethyl carbonate (DMC) with ethanol to co-produce ethyl methyl carbonate (EMC) and diethyl carbonate (DEC) was investigated based on an efficient catalytic system with the solid alkaline catalyst. It was found that the γ-Al2O3-supported K2CO3 catalyst exhibited high activity for the transesterification reaction, with a tunable feature for the selectivities of EMC and DEC by changing the space velocity and feed ratio of DMC to ethanol at the temperature between 120 and 150 °C. According to the results of characterizations and activity tests, a synergistic mechanism was proposed. The reaction kinetic model was also established, which displayed good agreement with the experimental results.