Transesterification of glycerol with dimethyl carbonate for the synthesis of glycerol carbonate and glycidol by iron (III) salen complex

Abstract

The transesterification of glycerol and dimethyl carbonate (DMC) was investigated in the presence of μ-oxo-Fe(salen)<inf>2</inf> under the optimal reaction condition. Several transition metal(salen) were tested, and only Fe (salen) shows an excellent results towards transesterification of glycerol. Therefore, Fe (salen) was characterized by IR, elemental analysis, MS, XPS and Surface Basicity test, and it can be confirmed that the as-synthesized Fe(salen) was existed in the form of μ-oxo-Fe(salen)<inf>2</inf>. It was proposed that the μ-oxo-Fe(salen)<inf>2</inf> can provide two different reaction pathway based on its molecular structures and the electronic configuration of iron itself. μ-oxo-Fe(salen)<inf>2</inf> was reacted with the mixture of glycerol and DMC under microwave-heating in 60 min at 100 °C and at the molar ratio of glycerol:DMC:μ-oxo-Fe(salen)<inf>2</inf> of 1:2:0.01 and obtaining the highest glycerol carbonate yield of 93.8 %.