Studies on Epoxidation of Tung oil with Hydrogen Peroxide Catalyzed by Sulfuric Acid

Tung oil with an iodine value (IV) of 99.63 g I2/100 g was epoxidized in-situ with glacial acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), in the presence sulfuric acid as catalyst. The objective of this research was to evaluate the effect of mole ratio of H2O2 to unsaturated fatty acids (UFA), reaction time and catalyst concentration in Tung oil epoxidation. The reaction kinetics were also studied. Epoxidation was carried out for 4 h. The reaction rates and side reactions were evaluated based on the IV and the conversion of the epoxidized Tung oil to oxirane. Catalytic reactions resulted in higher reaction rate than did non-catalytic reactions. Increasing the catalyst concentration resulted in a large decrease in the IV and an increase in the conversion to oxirane at the initial reaction stage. However, higher catalyst concentration in the epoxidation reaction caused to a decrease in reaction selectivity. The mole ratio of H2O2 to UFA had an influence identical to the catalyst concentration. The recommended optimum mole ratio and catalyst concentration in this study were 1.6 and 1.5%, respectively. The highest conversion was 48.94% for a mole ratio of 1.6. The proposed kinetic model provided good results and was suitable for all variations in reaction temperature. The activation energy (Ea) values were around 5.7663 to 76.2442 kcal/mol. Copyright © 2021 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). 

Room-temperature production of bio-based aldehydes from vegetable oil-derived epoxide via H2WO4@Al-MCM-41 as recyclable catalyst

The oxidative cleavage of vegetable oils and their derivatives to produce bio-based aldehydes is a potentially useful process, although the aldehyde products are readily oxidized to carboxylic acids and thus seldom obtained in high yields. The present study developed a room-temperature method for the synthesis of bio-aldehydes via the oxidative cleavage of vegetable oil-derived epoxides, using H₂WO₄ as the catalyst, H₂O₂ as the oxidant, and t-BuOH as the solvent. Reactions were carried out at temperatures ranging from 25 to 35 °C for 3.5–10.5 h, and provided >99% conversion and >90% aldehyde yield. In particular, an approximately 97% yield was obtained at 25 °C after 10.5 h. As the reaction proceeded, the H₂WO₄ dissolved to form a W-containing anion. Several mesoporous Al-MCM-41 materials having different Si/Al ratios were hydrothermally synthesized and used as adsorbents to recover the catalyst by adsorbing these anions. The adsorption capacity of the Al-MCM-41 was found to increase with decreases in the Si/Al ratio. The Al-MCM-41 had little effect on the oxidative cleavage reaction at 25 °C, and thus could be directly added to the reaction system. The excellent anion adsorption performance of the Al-MCM-41 greatly improved the reusability of the H₂WO₄ catalyst. When using the Al-MCM-41 with the best adsorption performance, there was no significant decrease in the activity of the catalyst following five reuses.

>90% bio-aldehydes yield was obtained from H₂WO₄-catalyzed epoxy vegetable oil at room-temperature; Al-MCM-41 was added to recover catalyst via adsorption.