1,2-diphenoxyethane with high purity was successfully synthesized by reacting 1,2-dibromoethane with phenol in the aqueous KOH solution. Under the optimized reaction conditions, the molar yield of 1,2-diphenoxyethane exceeding 75% on the basis of 1,2-dibromoethane and GC purity exceeding 99% were achieved, and this attractive result was confirmed by a series of scale-up test with 10kg/batch size. The following optimized con-ditions were obtained: the optimized reaction time is 25h, the concentration of base is w(KOH) = 50%, and the molar ratio of the main reactants is n(KOH): n(phenol) : n(1,2-dibromoethane) =3.0: 3.0: 1.0, the reaction temperature is 60℃. With the above opti-mized conditions, the impurity contained in the final product can be decreased to a limited level.