Methyl methoxyacetate (MMAc)

an important fine chemical

is an intermediate product producing ethylene glycol from syngas.Literature reports showed that high molar ratio of CO to DMM (>100) and low CO conversions (<0.5%) were obviously beneficial for vapor-phase carbonylation of dimethoxymethane (DMM) to MMAc.Using a slurry phase reactor

this work systematically studied the effects of different solvents

sulfonic acid resin catalysts

reaction temperature

pressure

reaction time and drying temperature on DMM conversion and MMAc selectivity.The solubility of CO in liquid phase was significantly increased by sulfolane solvent

thus obviously promoting the carbonylation reaction and suppressing the hydration as well as disproportionation reactions of DMM.Comparing with H-Y

the carbonylation activity of sulfonic acid resin catalyst was higher.The high rate of DMM disproportionation for H-Y was attributed to the micropores of zeolite

which facilitated a critical initial step in the formation of DME and MF.With the increased reaction temperature

pressure or reaction time

the conversion of DMM increases

whereas the selectivity of MMAc first increased and then decreased.With increasing the drying temperature

the moisture content left in the resin gradually decreased.But higher drying temperature resulted in the collapse of pores and surface sintering.For the liquid phase carbonylation process

many complicated and unreported side reactions were accompanied.The DMM conversion can reach to about 100% with 74.32% MMAc selectivity using sulfolane as solvent and D-009B as the catalyst at 110℃ and 5 MPa for 6 h.It was anticipated that this direct carbonylation of DMM to produce MMAc process was promising for industrial manufacture.