Investigation of HPW/TiO 2 -SnO 2 -ZrO 2 catalytic performance for epoxidation of soybean oil under hydrodynamic cavitation

Abstract

BACKGROUND Epoxidized vegetable oils are widely used as plasticizers, lubricants and reaction intermediates. In this work, a new solid acid catalyst was developed to obtain epoxidized soybean oil in high yield and combined with hydrodynamic cavitation technology to improve the efficiency of epoxidation. The structure and morphology characteristics of the catalyst were studied by XRD, FT-IR, Py-FTIR, NH3-TPD, SEM, N2-adsorption and desorption analysis and TG techniques. It was applied to the epoxidation of soybean oil, and the influence of various parameters including catalyst dosage, formic acid dosage, hydrogen peroxide dosage and reaction temperature on the relative conversion rate of oxirane of soybean oil, as well as the recyclability of catalyst was studied. RESULTS The catalyst has both Lewis and Brönsted acid sites and is stable at high temperatures. Under the optimum reaction conditions, the relative conversion rate of oxirane was 85.08% at 2h. The catalytic activity did not decrease significantly after 5 cycles of the reaction. CONCLUSION The results show that the catalyst is easy to prepare, has good catalytic activity in catalyzing the epoxidation reaction of soybean oil, and is easy to recover and highly reusable.