The deployment of fossil resources such as petroleum, coal and natural gas to produce fuels and chemicals has resulted in excessive carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and serious environmental issues. The implementation of CO2 utilization as a raw material for synthesis of fuels and chemicals has potential to reduce CO2 emissions and close the carbon cycle. Cyclic carbonates, materials as building blocks for polymers or green solvents in batteries, can be synthesized from CO2 and alkylene oxides. Although a variety of catalysts have been created to activate CO2 and alkylene oxides into cyclic carbonates, the catalytic efficiency is either low or the catalyst has high cost. In the present work, we report a hierarchical porous metallized poly-melamine-formaldehyde (PMF) polymer that has 100-fold reduction of cost and more than six-fold enhancement of catalytic activity compared to the state-of-the-art catalysts for synthesis of ethylene carbonate from epoxide and CO2 under the same reaction conditions. The hierarchically interconnected macro- , meso- and micropore structures in PMF that is formed via one-step high internal phase emulsion polymerization, facilitates mass transport and access to active sites. The high density of aminal groups and triazine rings in PMP provide multiple adsorptive sites for CO2 fixation and the consequent reaction with epoxide. The unprecedentedly low-cost and high-efficiency of metallized PMF as well as the simplicity in its synthesis exhibit great potential in synthesis of cyclic carbonates for chemical and plastics industries.

Low-cost and high-efficiency hierarchical catalyst for cyclic carbonate synthesis from CO2

255th National Meeting (2018)

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