Synthesis of Guaiacol with Dimethyl Carbonate and Catechol

Guaiacol is an impotant chemical intermediate which is widely used in pharmaceutical, perfumery and food flavoring industries. It was synthesized mainly from o-methoxyaniline. But it required a careful control of the reaction conditions and the yield was very low. In this paper, giaiacol was synthized with DMC and catechol. During the process, it was evaluated that the impaction of different catalyzers and some other reaction conditions. The best condition to synthesis guaiacol was when the ratio between catechol and DMC at 1∶3, the temperature at 150 ℃ by using HY molecular sieve as catalyzer. The transformation efficiency of catechol could reach 37.6%.