Regioselective nitration of o-xylene by using a novel clay-based shape-selective acid catalyst

In this work, a new catalyst was prepared by employing carbon molecular sieve (CMS) with natural kaolinite clay and is named UDCaT-8. The catalyst was fully characterized by XRD, DTA–TGA, FTIR, SEM and BET surface area and pore size analysis. o-Xylene nitration was conducted under solventless and room temperature condition using UDCaT-8 to get high regioselectivity. The process is eco-friendly, less expensive and leads to high selectivity to 4-nitro-o-xylene which is an important intermediate for synthetic vitamin B2 as well as a raw material for dyes and other chemicals.