Acetoxylation of pinene over activated carbons

Abstract

Pinene is renewable resources that is used in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries. The acetoxylation of pinene is synthetic methods to produce compounds with high commercial value. Traditionally, this reaction is carried out using homogenous catalysts, like sulfuric acid. However, due to the environmental problems, the homogeneous catalysts have been replaced by heterogenous catalyst. The acetoxylation of alpha-pinene have been performed using solid materials, such as zeolite, heteropolyacids and SBA-15 with sulfonic groups. Activated carbons are high surface area materials, exhibiting good stability, good mechanical resistance, and high porosity. They have many applications as catalyst supports, in the fine chemical industry, because they are relatively cheap, and they are stable in both acidic and basic environments. In this work, it is studied the acetoxylation of alpha-pinene over activated carbons.