Esterification of benzyl alcohol with acetic acid over mesoporous H-ZSM-5

In this study, the performance of mesoporous ZSM-5 has been studied on the esterification of acetic acid (AA) with benzyl alcohol (BA). The mesoporous ZSM-5 catalyst has been synthesized with the variation of aging time i.e. 6, 12, and 24 hours at the same temperature, 70°C. The cation exchange of Na-ZSM-5 to H-ZSM-5 was performed before the catalytic activity test. The acidity type and amount of solids were determined by FT-IR spectroscopy using pyridine as a probe molecule. The characterization by pyridine adsorption showed that at a higher mesoporous surface area, the number of Lewis acid was increased. The highest mesoporous surface area, Lewis, and Brönsted acid sites were obtained by sam-ple which has the lowest crystallinity, i.e. 255.78 m²/g, 0.2732 mmol/g, and 0.20612 mmol/g, respectively. Influence of mesoporous volume was studied on the catalytic activity of the mesoporous ZSM-5 in the esterification reaction. Conversion of acetic acid in the esterification reaction for samples of HZ-6, HZ-12, and HZ-24 were obtained by titration methods, i.e. 39.59, 36.39, and 32.90 %, respectively. Hence, the reaction temperature of 393 K, molar ratio 1:4 (AA:BA) and catalyst loading 5 % were selected as an optimum reaction parameters.