The invention relates to a method for catalytic synthesis of benzyl
toluene by an activated clay-loaded
ferric trichloride (FeCl3)
solid acid catalyst. The method comprises the following steps: adding
calcium-based
bentonite with concentrated
sulfuric acid, performing
backflow stirring and
drying to obtain
solid activated clay; dissolving the FeCl3 in an
acetonitrile solution, adding the prepared activated clay, stirring for 24 hours at a
room temperature, filtering and activating at a temperature of 120 DEG C to obtain the activated clay-loaded FeCl3
solid acid catalyst; adding the activated clay-loaded FeCl3
solid acid catalyst in an
alkylation reaction system of
benzyl chloride and
toluene for catalytic reaction, filtering and recovering the catalyst; performing reduced-pressure
distillation and refinement on a benzyl
toluene crude product to obtain benzyl toluene. The method provided by the invention has the advantages that the catalyst is rich in
raw material source, low in cost, simple in preparation process, low in
energy consumption due to no need of high temperature activation and easy for separation from the product; when the catalyst is used for the synthetic reaction of the benzyl toluene, the reaction conversion rate is high, the selectivity is strong, conditions are mild, the equipment
corrosion is low, the catalyst is easy to recover and can be reused, and the environment
pollution is less, so that the application prospect is wide.