Acrylic acid Chemical catalysis

Commodity organic chemicals (Chapter 1) largely produced by heterogeneously catalyzed routes include acrylic acid (Section 2.8), acrylonitrile (Section 2.10), adipic acid (Section 2.2.2), cumene (Section 5.2.3) ethylbenzene (Section 5.2.1) methanol (Section 4.7.1) styrene (Section 3.9) terephthalates (Section 2.3) ethylene oxide (Section 2.4) vinyl acetate (Section 2.15.7), and many others in a word, heterogeneous catalysis is huge. 

Acrylic acid is an important material for the chemical Industry, either as such or in (he form of acrylates and acrylamides. The Union Oil synthesis of acrylic acid from ethylene is performed at 140-150 C, 77 atm, C2 H4/CO 1 (Otalyst 0.1% PdOj. 0.5% CUCI2 in the presence of lithium acetate and chloride). The solvent is a mixture of acetic acid and acetic anhydride (about 20%) 24. The chemical steps of this Wacker-type catalysis are outlined ... 

Figure 3. Catalytic life cycles homogeneous versus heterogeneous catalysis, taking the bulk chemical acrylic acid as an example.

Sucrose acrylate was synthesized by enzymatic catalysis using an enzyme proleather (a protease from Bacillus Sp.) (Patil et al, 1991a). The sucrose acrylate was polymerized using potassium persulfate/hydrogen peroxide to obtain poly(sucrose acrylate). Tokiwa et al (2000) reported esterification of glucose with adipic acid enzymatically and later on effected its polymerization by conventional methods to obtain biodegradable polymers. Similarly, a-D-galactose was acryloylated with vinyl acrylate enzymatically and later polymerized chemically. 

---