Esterification of levulinic acid to n- Butyl levulinate using mesoporous zirconium phosphate

In the recent decades, there has been growing interest in the synthesis of alkyl levulinates. Among these, n-Butyl levulinate obtained by catalytic esterification of levulinic acid and n-Butanol is a versatile biomass-derived that can be used in many applications such as fragrance and fuel additives [1-4]. In this study, mesoporous zirconium phosphate was used as a heterogeneous catalyst for the production of n- Butyl levulinate from levulinic acid. The catalyst was characterized using a couple of techniques such as FT-IR, BET, SEM, TEM and ICP-OES analysis. The effect of various parameters such as reaction time, temperature, amount of catalyst, molar ratio of LA to n-Butanol were investigated. The optimum conditions for the reaction were: temperature 120, reaction time 7 hours, ratio of acid to alcohol 1:9 and 0.01g catalyst (80%)