Hydrolysis of ethyl acetate using low cost heterogeneous catalysts

Abstract

The hydrolysis of ethyl acetate is an important reaction in process engineering applications. In industrial scale the reaction is carried out under presence of homogeneous acid catalyst which leads to several environmental problems including generation of acidic waste, corrosion of equipment, wastage of catalyst and difficulties in catalyst separation. The objective of the research is to study the suitability of carbon based heterogeneous catalyst for the hydrolysis reaction of ethyl acetate. As the carbon based heterogeneous catalysts have several advantages over homogeneous acid catalysts including low cost of preparation, slower deactivation, abundance, cost effectiveness, higher stability, large number of active sites and minimal interference with the final products. According to the local availability, physical characteristics and practical applicability, saw dust, paddy husk and activated carbon are selected for the catalysis. These substances are pretreated using concentrated hydrochloric by wet impregnation method. Hydrolysis reaction experiments were done under constant temperature and catalyst loading. The percentage conversion of ethyl acetate was analysed in each sample using acid base titration method. The activated carbon catalyst showed better heterogeneous catalyst characteristics for hydrolysis of ethyl acetate out of the selected carbon based substances.