Efficient Synthesis of Dimethyl Carbonate via Transesterification of Ethylene Carbonate Catalyzed by CN-SiAlO Composites

The transesterification reaction between ethylene carbonate (EC) and methanol is a sustainable method to produce dimethyl carbonate (DMC). As typical solid bases, carbon nitride (CN) materials have demonstrated catalytic application in many base-catalyzing reactions. In this work, in order to increase the surface area and improve the base intensity of the CN material, microporous MCM-22 was utilized to load CN, and then treated by NaOH (a.q.), thus enabling CN/MCM-22 composites being transferred into mesoporous CN-SiAlO materials. The physicochemical properties of the synthesized materials were analyzed by XRD, N₂ adsorption–desorption, FT-IR, XPS, SEM, TG, and CO₂-TPD. As mesoporous base catalysts, the CN-SiAlO materials showed superior catalytic activity to the bare CN and CN/MCM-22 in the transesterification reaction of EC with methanol. Under reaction temperature of 130 °C and reaction time of 3 h, the yield of DMC was up to 83.3%.