Environmentally friendly efficient one-pot esterification of cyclohexane with CuO-promoted sulfated zirconia

The production of dibutyl phthalate directly from oxidation and esterification of cyclohexane, catalyzed by CuO-modified sulfated zirconia (SZCu) by one-pot under mild condition, was studied. The esterification reaction process was monitored by UV-vis spectra and the distribution of the products was analyzed by gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The result revealed that the SZCu catalyst was efficient in the direct oxidation and esterification of cyclohexane to ester. The selectivity for ester (dibutyl phthalate) can reach up to 72.2 wt.%, and the yield of ester was 29.5 wt.%. The esterification reaction, that offers several advantages such as usage of environmental friendly oxidant, simple work-up procedure, no-solvent conditions, short reaction times, easy recovery and reusability of the catalyst, is necessary for chemosynthesis industry from the environment standpoint. The regeneration property of SZCu was also tested in this work.