Enhanced ketalization activity of cyclohexanone and ethanediol over immobilized ionic liquid in mesoporous materials

Three different mesoporous molecular sieves, including MCM-41, MCM-48, and SBA-15, were synthesized by hydrothermal process and characterized by XRD, BET and TEM. The chlorine-aluminate acidic ionic liquid of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride-aluminum chloride (Bmim]Cl-AlCl₃, denoted as Al-ILs) was prepared by two-step method. The immobilized ionic liquid (SBA-15/Al-ILs, MCM-41/Al-ILs, MCM-48/Al-ILs) was prepared through impregnating Al-ILs. The structures of composite catalysts were characterized by XRD, BET, FT-IR, TEM and XPS. The amounts of aluminum present in the resulting composite catalysts were detected by ICP-AES to calculate the amount of AL-ILs impregnated. The ketalization between cyclohexanone and ethanediol was used as the model reaction to test the catalytic activities of the composite catalysts. The effects of molar ratio of the reactants, reaction time, the catalyst dose, as well as the addition of cyclohexane were discussed in detail. Also, catalytic activities of three catalysts with different pore sizes were compared. Under comparable conditions, the SBA-15/Al-ILs composite catalyst exhibited much high catalytic activity and gave a maximum yield that was ca. 85.1%.