The invention discloses a preparation method of 
strontium ranelate key intermediate 3-
ketoglutaric acid diethyl (dimethyl) ester. The method comprises the steps of firstly adding a 
solvent into a reactor, cooling, putting a 
solid super acidic catalyst, then putting 
citric acid monohydrate, slowly heating, performing a 
thermal reaction, heating until the 
thermal reaction ends after no obvious bubbles exist, filtering to obtain filtrate, recycling a 
filter cake as a catalyst, performing 
solvent recovery on the filtrate, adding into 
ice water, extracting by adding 
dichloromethane, washing an extract by using a 
sodium bicarbonate aqueous solution, water and a saturated 
saline solution in sequence, and performing reduced pressure 
distillation to obtain a product, wherein the catalyst is 
solid super-acid; 
reaction conditions are as follows: the 
reaction temperature is between -20 DEG C and 60 DEG C, and the reaction time is 2-12 hours (the sum of the heat preservation time). The process disclosed by the invention does not use any liquid acid catalyst, is mild in reaction, short in steps and simple and convenient in operation, can not cause acid 
wastewater discharge, and is green and environment-friendly.