Alkanes propylene epoxidation

Substitutive lUPAC nomenclature names epoxides as epoxy derivatives of alkanes According to this system ethylene oxide becomes epoxyethane and propylene oxide becomes 1 2 epoxypropane The prefix epoxy always immediately precedes the alkane ending it is not listed m alphabetical order like other substituents... 

A group of related bacterial enzymes hydroxylate alkanes,507 toluene,508 phenol,509 and other substrates.5093 Eukaryotic fatty acid desaturases (Fig. 16-20B) belong to the same family.508 Some bacteria use cytochrome P450 or other oxygenase to add an oxygen atom to an alkene to form an epoxide. For example, propylene... 

Alkane oxidation to alcohols, aldehydes and ketones has been extensively studied and it was found that the smaller linear alkanes show higher turnovers than the longer linear, branched and cyclic alkanes [81]. Although the turnover numbers are found to increase with the addition of methanol as a co-solvent, the general role of the co-solvent in selectivity is still not clear. Catalytic epoxidations of relatively inert alkenes such as propylene and allyl chloride were found to be facile under mild... 

The subjects presented span a wide range of oxidation reactions and catalysts. These include the currently important area of lower alkane oxidation to the corresponding olefins, unsaturated aldehydes, acids and nitriles. In this manner, the abundant and less expensive alkanes replace the less abundant and more expensive olefins as starting materials for industrially important intermediates and chemicals. In the oxidative activation of methane the emphasis is shifting towards the use of extremely short contact times and newer more rugged catalysts. In the area of olefin oxidations, of particular note are the high efficiency epoxidation of propylene, and new detailed mechanistic insights into the... 

Transition Metai-Catalyzed Epoxidation with Alkyl Hydroperoxides. Alkyl hydroperoxides are attractive oxidants on a technical scale because they can be produced by autoxidation of branched alkanes with oxygen. This concept has been realized on the largest scale in the so-called Halcon process, i.e., the transition metal-catalyzed epoxidation of propylene to propylene oxide (35) (Fig. 9). Homogeneous and heterogeneous titanium, vanadium, and molybdenum catalysts are capable of catalyzing the C=C-epoxidation by alkyl hydroperoxide (for a review see Ref. 36). 

Indirect oxidation of propylene is an important route for propylene oxide production that proceeds in two reaction steps. The first step is the formation of a peroxide from alkanes, aldehydes, or adds by oxidation with air or oxygen. The second reaction step is the epoxidation of propylene to PO by oxygen transfer from the peroxide with formation of water, alcohol, or acid. The catalytic oxidation of propylene with organic hydroperoxides is nowadays a successful commercial production route (51% of world capacity). Two organic hydroperoxides dominate the processes (i) a process using isobutane (peroxide tert-butyl hydroperoxide, co-product tert-butyl alcohol), which accounts for 15% of the world capacity and (ii) a process using ethylbenzene (peroxide ethylbenzene hydroperoxide, co-product styrene) that accounts for 33% of the world capacity. The process via isobutane is presented by ... 

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