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- In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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Received January 2, 2024
Accepted March 14, 2024
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This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0) which permits
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Plastic-Derived Solid Acid Catalysts for the Production of Methyl 2-Hydroxyisobutyrate via Esterification
Abstract
In this study, we successfully prepare solid acid catalysts using plastic as the starting material for the production of methyl
2-hydroxyisobutyrate (HBM) through the esterifi cation of 2-hydroxyisobutyric acid (HBA) and methanol. Polyethylene (PE)
and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) are sulfonated at diff erent temperatures (X) to obtain sulfonated polymer catalysts (SPE_X and
SPVC_X). Various characterizations clearly confi rm the introduction of sulfonic acid groups (–SO 3 H groups), which serve
as active sites in this reaction, on the PE and PVC surfaces via sulfonation. For the SPVC_X catalysts, an excessively high
sulfonation temperature facilitate the loss of chlorine groups (–Cl groups) via dehydrochlorination, resulting in a decrease
in catalytic activity. In particular, the –Cl groups improve the acidic properties and accessibility of reactants to the –SO 3 H
groups of the SPVC_X catalysts, leading to a high HBM yield. Therefore, the SPVC_120 catalyst show the highest HBM yield
(ca. 75%) because of the abundant –SO 3 H and –Cl groups on the catalyst surface. Furthermore, the catalytic performance of
the SPVC_120 catalyst surpassed those of commercial ion-exchange resins such as Amberlyst-15 and Nafi on NR50, which
are representative solid acid catalysts for esterifi cation.
