DAA readily undergoes a consecutive dehydration reaction to form 4-methyl-3-penten-2-one, which is commonly called mesityl oxide (MO). The overall reaction
outlining the conversion of acetone to DAA and MO is shown in eq. (1). The behaviour of the MO forming reaction is quite unique. Although the formation of MO
from DAA is reversible, very small quantities of MO were produced during our experiments and this reaction behaves as if it is irreversibe. Due to the combined
inßuences of pore di¤usion and the fast acetone-DAA equilibrium, MO production can be treated as a pseudo-zero-order reaction (Podrebarac et al., 1997):