Sustainable process for the production of symmetrical dibasic acid ester-based thermal energy storage materials from lipids

Abstract

Oleochemical-based long-chain diesters are potential organic phase change materials convenient for thermal energy storage. The development of efficient and green methods is an important requirement for the preparation of these environmentally friendly compounds, which also are finding wide industrial application. Thus, in the present work, a series of dibasic acid esters were synthesized through ionic liquid catalyzed scalable chemical esterification or transesterification reactions in a solvent-free medium. The starting compounds, dicarboxylic acids or their methyl esters and fatty alcohols or cholesterol, were reacted in the ratio of 1:2 respectively and the synthesized esters were characterized by FT-IR, 1 H NMR, and 13 C NMR.