Epoxidation of soybean oil using a homogeneous catalytic system based on a molybdenum (VI) complex Original Research Article

The ability of bis(acetyl-acetonato)dioxo-molybdenum (VI) [MoO2(acac)2] to catalyse the epoxidation of soybean oil in the presence of tert-butyl hydroperoxide as oxidizing agent has been investigated. The influence of reaction time and temperature in the course of the epoxidation reaction was evaluated by quantitative 1H NMR. When epoxidation was carried out in refluxing toluene at 110 °C for 2 h, a 70.1% conversion of substrate was obtained, producing 54.1% epoxidation with a selectivity of 77.2%. The 1H NMR spectroscopic method selected for the purpose of this work allowed a simple and rapid evaluation of the mono- and diepoxides obtained following the epoxidation of soybean oil.