Petersburg: St. Petersburg university press) (in Russian) **Part 4**

**Recent Developments** 

252 Chemical Kinetics

Zhiglinski A G 1994 *Handbook of Rate Constants of Process of Atoms, Electrons and Photons* (St.

**12** 

*P.R.China* 

**Recent Developments on the Mechanism and** 

*Institute of Chemical Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology,* 

Esters have played a significant role in daily living and chemical industry, such as plasticizers, fragrance, adhesive and lubricants (Joseph et al., 2005; Mbaraka & Shanks, 2006; Krause et al., 2009; Martínez et al., 2011). The vast majority of esters can be prepared using esterification reaction in the chemical engineering industry. Esterification has acquired further improvement from the engineering side; this mainly depends on the research of esterification kinetics. On the other hand, the need to control chemical reactions at the molecular level, which depends critically on the catalytic mechanism, is rapidly increasing

In the recent years, various esterification mechanisms were proposed for homogeneous and heterogeneous systems. Base on the mechanism, numerous kinetic models have been developed to represent the kinetic behaviors of esterification, such as simple orders or the power-law model, the pseudo-homogeneous model, the L-H model, the E-R model, etc.

Herein, we review the mechanisms of esterification catalyzed by inorganic acid, Lewis acid, metallic compounds, solid acids, ion-exchange resin, respectively. Meanwhile, the kinetics for each esterification is also conducted in detail. The study on the mechanism of various catalysts is not only useful in the present applications but it is required to enhance the scope of their applications. Therefore, it is desired to research and develop more efficient catalysts for high yield ester production, under mild reaction conditions. The esterification kinetics is

A literature survey more than 90 relevant references has been done in this chapter. The studies on esterification are mainly focused on the following aspects: (1) establishing the adequate reaction mechanism according to the research papers, and (2) evaluating the

Inorganic acids, such as H2SO4, HCl and HI, are still being widely applied in the chemical industry (Liu et al., 2006; Schmitt et al., 2008). Under this condition, they are used as

**1. Introduction** 

(Salciccioli et al., 2011).

important for simulation and design of a reactor.

**2. Esterification mechanism and kinetic model** 

available esterification kinetics.

**2.1 Inorganic acids** 

**Kinetics of Esterification Reaction** 

Zuoxiang Zeng, Li Cui, Weilan Xue, Jing Chen and Yu Che

 **Promoted by Various Catalysts** 
