Esterification of various acids with various alcohols at equivalent molar ratio of acid to alcohol has been investigated, using perfluorous nonene as a fluorous solvent. This novel approach provided an increased the product yields by a magnitude of 10% to 47%. The use of perfluorous nonene solvent allowed the formation of a fluorous biphase system with the ester products thereby driving the esterification equilibrium to move rightly. The fluorous solvent could be recovered and reused by simple phase separation with little loss. In the esterification with fluorous solvent, the reflux temperatures were much lower.

Key words: fluorous solvent, esterification, perfluorous nonene, fluorous biphase system