Design of well balanced hydrophilic–lipophilic catalytic surfaces for the direct and selective monoesterification of various polyols

Abstract

The transesterification process is a well known reaction of organic chemistry. However, the monoesterification of unprotected polyols such as glycerol or sucrose is much more complex and the design of selective catalysts is becoming a huge challenge in order to avoid many protection and deprotection steps, harmful for the cost and the environmental impact of the resulting process. In this study, we showed that the control of the hydrophilic–lipophilic balance of heterogeneous catalysts is a crucial key in order to tune both the catalyst activity and the monoester selectivity. Indeed, whereas homogeneous guanidine led to low selectivity toward monoesters, its anchorage on a hydrophilic solid support such as silica allowed us to prepare two basic hybrid organic–inorganic materials able to selectively afford monoesters in high yield and in an environmentally-friendly process, at low temperature and starting from an equimolecular mixture of unprotected polyols and various fatty methyl esters.