imidazolium chloride immobilized fly ash as a heterogenized organocatalyst for esterification reaction under microwave irradiation heating

An efficient solventless one-pot procedure for the synthesis of imidazolium based ionic liquid under microwave irradiation is described in which 1-methylimidazole was modified by organosilane (3-chloropropyl triethoxysilane). this ionic liquid 1-methyl-3-[(triethoxysilyl)propyl]imidazolium chloride (tmicl) is immobilized on mechanically activated fly ash (mfa) by co-condensation method to develop an active organocatalyst (tmicl/mfa). the mechanical activation has generated significant number of silanol groups suitable for immobilizing ionic liquids. for characterization of various materials, different techniques viz, xrd, ftir, sem-edx, tga, bet surface area, h1nmr are used. the prepared tmicl/mfa exhibited high catalytic activity for a series of microwave assisted esterification of aliphatic alcohols and salicylic acid for four successive reaction cycles under optimized conditions.