Potassium-incorporated mesoporous carbons: strong solid bases with enhanced catalytic activity and stability

Abstract

With the growing demand for green chemistry, mesoporous solid strong bases have attracted increasing attention in view of their tremendous potential as eco-friendly catalysts in diverse reactions. In the present study, K-incorporated mesoporous carbon is successfully prepared through high-temperature chemical activation combined with the hard-templating method. The combined method is proved to be very effective at promoting the formation of stable K species that strongly interact with the carbon support. The obtained solid bases thus have both high activity and enhanced water-resistant stability, which is reflected in their catalysis of the transesterification of ethylene carbonate with methanol to dimethyl carbonate. A much higher turnover frequency (TOF) value (430.4 h⁻¹) and better reusability are thus observed, compared with a series of typical and popular solid bases, such as MgO (TOF, 1.0 h⁻¹) and CaO/SBA-15 (TOF, 6.4 h⁻¹).