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, H1</sup>NMR 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.