Synthesis of propylene carbonate from CO₂ catalyzed by supported imidazoles ionic liquids

Carbon dioxide is one of the most main greenhouse gases causing the global warming, however, as a rich C1 resource, the high value utilization of CO₂ has attracted wide attention. Cyclic carbonate is an excellent medium for batteries and capacitors, which is widely used in industrial production. Therefore, it is of great significance to convert CO₂ into cyclic carbonate from the viewpoint of environmental protection and resource utilization. In this paper, we synthesized a series of imidazole heterogeneous catalysts supported on polystyrene resin, and the catalytic activity for cycloaddition reaction of CO₂ in high pressure reactor was studied. The results showed that PS-TBIM-PCIMBr₂ exhibited the excellent and stable catalytic activity. PS-TBIM-PCIMBr₂ was also used to prepare propylene carbonate in the continuous fixed-bed reactor and the yield of PC was still 91% after 500 h.