Studies on Epoxidation of Tung oil with Hydrogen Peroxide Catalyzed by Sulfuric Acid

Tung oil with an iodine value (IV) of 99.63 g I2/100 g was epoxidized in-situ with glacial acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), in the presence sulfuric acid as catalyst. The objective of this research was to evaluate the effect of mole ratio of H2O2 to unsaturated fatty acids (UFA), reaction time and catalyst concentration in Tung oil epoxidation. The reaction kinetics were also studied. Epoxidation was carried out for 4 h. The reaction rates and side reactions were evaluated based on the IV and the conversion of the epoxidized Tung oil to oxirane. Catalytic reactions resulted in higher reaction rate than did non-catalytic reactions. Increasing the catalyst concentration resulted in a large decrease in the IV and an increase in the conversion to oxirane at the initial reaction stage. However, higher catalyst concentra-tion in the epoxidation reaction caused to a decrease in reaction selectivity. The mole ratio of H2O2 to UFA had an influence identical to the catalyst concentration. The recommended optimum mole ratio and catalyst concentration in this study were 1.6 and 1.5%, respectively. The highest conversion was 48.94% for a mole ratio of 1.6. The proposed kinetic model provided good results and was suitable for all variations in reaction temperature. The activation energy (Ea) values were around 5.7663 to 76.2442 kcal/mol.