Considering the importance of efficient and greener transesterification of ethylacetoacetate to áºÂÂÂÃ?â??Ã?ž-keto esters we employed a top-down method of synthesis of hierarchical MFI supported CeO2 for green protocol. The catalyst was characterized by different techniques such as powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission Electron microscopy (TEM), nitrogen adsorption-desorption, UV-vis diffused reflectance spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) methods. The CeO2 supported MFI was evaluated for the transesterification of ethyl acetoacetate by n-amyl alcohol. The influence of temperature and time, molar ratio, catalyst amount and hierarchical topology of MFI on the reaction was investigated. The catalyst exhibited efficient heterogeneous catalytic activity for the transesterification of ethyl acetoacetate and n-amyl alcohol with 97 % conversion at 4 h of reaction time under the optimised reaction temperature. A second order kinetics was observed for the reaction with activation energy of 43.8 kJmol-1. The catalyst was also found to be effective for linear long chain, aryl, cyclic and tertiary alcohols as well. The heterogeneous reaction was adopted avoiding the use of any solvent. Reuse of the catalyst for at least five consecutive runs did not show any significant activity.
