Structure and property of PFSA/PES porous catalytic nanofibers

Perfluorinated sulfonic acid (PFSA)/polyether sulfone (PES) porous catalytic nanofiber was fabricated and applied to esterification reaction as catalyst in this work. To this aim, PES porous nanofibers were firstly prepared through electrospinning, and PFSA resin as catalyst was successfully anchored on these PES porous nanofibers through dip-coating method. Mesoporous structure was observed in PES porous nanofibers with high specific surface area of 40.6 m 2 /g. The catalytic properties of PFSA/PES porous catalytic nanofibers were measured by esterification of ethanol and acetic acid as model reaction. The recovery of PFSA/PES porous catalytic nanofibers remained 93.8% after three cycles of esterification, and the ion exchange capacity almost remained at a constant level, showing excellent recovery. For PFSA/PES porous catalytic nanofibers loaded with 5 wt% of PFSA as catalyst, the conversion rate and forward reaction kinetics constant achieved 85.8% at 1 h and 9.03 × 10 −4 m 3 kmol −1 s −1 g −1 , respectively.