Well-dispersed carbon-supported MgO catalysts were prepared using a kind of porous carbon (NC-2) as support and magnesium nitrate solution as MgO precursor by a simple wet impregnation technique. Various characterization techniques, including XRD, N2 sorption, DRIFT. XPS and TPD, were carried out to investigate their physical-chemical properties, the states of MgO species and the interaction between MgO and NC-2 materials. The catalytic properties of MgO/NC-2 catalysts were investigated in the liquid-phase transesterification of dimethyl carbonate (DMC) with diethyl carbonate (DEC). Compared with other kinds of carbon-supported MgO catalysts, MgO/NC-2 shows remarkably higher activity for the formation of ethyl methyl carbonate (EMC). Moreover, the NC-2 supported catalyst possesses very high stability against leaching of active species under test reaction conditions, indicating the truly heterogeneous nature of this catalyst. The presence of relatively rich oxygen-containing surface groups on the NC-2 carbon support should be in favor of the high dispersion of MgO particles, thus being beneficial to the fabrication of active and stable heterogeneous catalysts for the transesterificaiton reaction. (C) 2010 Elsevier BM. All rights reserved.