Ricerc@Sapienza

An effective flow protocol exploiting the features of a specifically designed solid catalytic system has been defined for the direct esterification of biomass-derived carboxylic acids with structurally diverse alcohols on grams per hour scale and with minimal cost in terms of waste disposal. The potential of the catalyst to work indefinitely under pump-free continuous flow conditions has been explored.

The aim of this work was to investigate on the possibility to use nano-magnetite particles supported on waste biomass as heterogeneous catalyst for the production of p-aminophenol starting from a well-known pollutant, p-nitrophenol, in fixed-bed reactors. The kinetic and the thermodynamic of the process was firstly studied in batch system, subsequently a first scale-up was performed using a glass column packed with the supported catalyst. The experimental data obtained with the column were interpreted in light of a suitable dynamic model.