Aldehydes from alkene hydroformylation

The synthesis of aldehydes from alkenes known as hydroformylation using CO and hydrogen and a homogeneous catalyst is a very important industrial process [204]. Today, over seven million tons of oxoproducts are formed each year using this procedure, with the majority of butanal and butanol from propene. To further increase the efficiency of this process it can be combined with other transformations in a domino fashion. Eilbracht and coworkers [205] used a Mukaiyama aldol reaction as a second step, as shown for the substrate 6/2-63 which, after 3 days led to 6/2-65 in 91% yield via the primarily formed adduct 6/2-64 (Scheme 6/2.13). However, employing a reaction time of 20 h gave 6/2-64 as the main product. 

As mentioned in the introduction, hydroformylation is an important industrial process used for the formation of aldehydes from alkenes. Some six million... 

The synthesis of aldehydes via hydroformylation of alkenes is an important industrial process used to produce in the region of 6 million tonnes a year of aldehydes. These compounds are used as intermediates in the manufacture of plasticizers, soaps, detergents and pharmaceutical products [7], While the majority of aldehydes prepared from alkene hydroformylation are done so in organic solvents, some research in 1975 showed that rhodium complexes with sulfonated phosphine ligands immobilized in water were able to hydroformylate propene with virtually complete retention of rhodium in the aqueous phase [8], Since catalyst loss is a major problem in the production of bulk chemicals of this nature, the process was scaled up, culminating in the Ruhrchemie-Rhone-Poulenc process for hydroformylation of propene, initially on a 120000 tonne per year scale [9], The development of this biphasic process represents one of the major transitions since the discovery of the hydroformylation reaction. The key transitions in this field include [10] ... 

Hydroformylation is a useful catalytic method for the synthesis of aldehydes from alkenes and alkynes. There are no other methods that compete directly with hydroformylation for the synthesis of alkyl aldehydes. However, when the desired compounds are carboxylic acids or esters, and aldehydes are used as their... 

Amidocarbonylation converts aldehydes into amido-substituted amino acids, which have many important industrial applications ranging from pharmaceuticals to detergents and metal-chelating agents.588 Two catalyst systems have been developed, a cobalt-based system and, more recently a palladium-based system. In the cobalt system, alkenes can be used as the starting material, thus conducting alkene-hydroformylation, formation of hemi-amidal and carbonylation in one pot as... 

Also referred to as the oxo process or hydrocarbonylation, hydroformylation is a route to producing an aldehyde from an alkene, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide. This process has been known for approximately 70 years, and it is still economically important because useful compounds are produced in enormous quantities by this means. The reaction is summarized by the following equation ... 

With the RCH/RP process, it is possible to hydroformylate propene up to pentenes with satisfying space time yields. On the other hand, heavier aldehydes such as Cio (iso-decanal) or higher from the hydroformylation of nonene(s), decenes, etc. can not be separated from the oxo catalysts by conventional means such as distillation due to thermal instability at the required temperatures and thus especially needs the careful aqueous-biphasic separation technique. There are numerous attempts to overcome the problem of low reactivity of higher alkenes which is due to low miscibility of the alkenes in water [26,27b, 50a,58d]. These proposals can briefly be summarized as ... 

A breakthrough occurred in the mid-seventies when Union Carbide and Celanese introduced Rh/phosphine catalysts in commercial processes. This catalyst is based on the work by Wilkinson s group he received the Nobel prize for his work in 1973. Rhodium-based catalysts are much more active than cobalt catalysts and, imder certain conditions, at least for 1-alkenes, they are also more selective. The processes for the hydroformylation of higher alkenes (detergent alcohols) still rely on cobalt catalysis. A new development is the use of water-soluble complexes obtained through sulphonation of the ligands (Ruhrchemie). The new hydroformylation plants for the production of butyl-aldehyde from propene are all based on rhodium catalysts. 

The original hydroformylation process described above is still used, especially for the production of aldehydes and alcohols derived from alkenes with more than four carbon atoms. The process, however, is not without problems in actual practice. Some of these problems include the following. 

Since its discovery by Roelen in 1938 [l],the hydroformylation process was exclusively based on cobalt as catalyst metal, until the development of rhodium-phosphine complexes in the late 1960s [2]. Industrial efforts have been focused on the preparation of norraaZ-aldehydes (linear aldehydes) from 1-alkenes. In contrast, asymmetric hydroformylation, which requires iso-aldehydes (branched aldehydes) to be formed from 1 -alkenes, was first examined in the early 1970s by four groups independently, using Rh(I) complexes of chiral phosphines as catalysts [3,4,5,6]. Since then, a number of chiral ligands have been developed for... 

Hydroformylation of alkenes (Fig. 5.8) is an important commercial process for the production of aldehydes and alcohols from alkenes and is one of the most important examples of homogeneous catalysis in industry with a production capacity of more than 8 million tons/year [38]. Initial work by Manassen on aqueous biphasic catalysis [39]... 

Importantly, a similar result was obtained with heterocyclic alkenes such as 2,5-dihydrofuran and N-Boc-pyrroline which were converted to the corresponding 3-aldehyde. It must be noted that the P[0(2,4-di-/BuC6H3)]3 rhodium-based catalyst, which is one of the most active catalyst for this type of transformation, also furnished the 2-aldehyde derivative resulting from the hydroformylation of the 2,3-dihydroheterocyclopentenes (Scheme 34). 

The cis-1,2-addition of M-X bonds to unsaturated A=B bonds and its reverse, the -elimination of X from M-B-A-X, are fundamental elementary steps of catalytic reactions such as hydrogenation, hydroformylation, oligomerization, polymerization, hydrosilation, hydrocyanation, or alkene isomerization processes, as well as the Heck reaction. Most of the reactions described in the literature involve M-H or M-C bonds, and alkenes or alkynes. Besides them there are processes where the unsaturated substrate is different from alkene or alkyne This includes CO2, CS2, aldehydes and ketones, imine, or nitrile. Also, there are processes involving M-Si, M-Sn, M-B, M-N, M-P, or M-M bonds. The insertion of alkenes into M-carbene bonds is not essentially different in their intimate mechanism, but it is not discussed in this chapter. 

Producing aldehyde groups (CHO) from alkenes is known as hydroformulation — an aldehyde and a hydrogen atom are added to a carbon-carbon double bond. Usually, the aldehydes aren t the final desired product instead, the aldehydes are commonly treated with hydrogen to produce primary alcohols (RCH2OH). Historically, hydroformylation is a key reaction to the development of the modern field of industrial chemistry. 

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