Ethylene, metathesis

Ans. 1,5-COD to cyclooctene cyclooctene plus ethylene metathesis to give Cio dialkene, which on selective hydrogenation followed by hydrofor-mylation will give the aldehyde. 

Basset and coworkers have proposed ethylene metathesis to account for... 

Smulik JA, Giessert AJ, Diver ST. Ethylene metathesis of sulfru--containing alkynes. Tetrahedron Lett. 2002 43 209 211. 

Cyclic Polyolefins (GPO) and Gycloolefin Copolymers (GOG). Japanese and European companies are developing amorphous cycHc polyolefins as substrate materials for optical data storage (213—217). The materials are based on dicyclopentadiene and/or tetracyclododecene (10), where R = H, alkyl, or COOCH. Products are formed by Ziegler-Natta polymerization with addition of ethylene or propylene (11) or so-called metathesis polymerization and hydrogenation (12), (101,216). These products may stiU contain about 10% of the dicycHc stmcture (216). 

A different approach, taken by both Monsanto (58) and Gulf Research and Development Company (59), involved the oxidative coupling of two molecules of toluene to yield stilbene. The stilbene is then subjected to a metathesis reaction with ethylene to yield two molecules of styrene. 

Disproportionation of Olefins. Disproportionation or the metathesis reaction offers an opportunity to convert surplus olefins to other desirable olefins. Phillips Petroleum and Institut Fransais du Petrc le have pioneered this technology for the dimerization of light olefins. The original metathesis reaction of Phillips Petroleum was intended to convert propylene to 2-butene and ethylene (58). The reverse reaction that converts 2-butene in the presence of excess ethylene to propylene has also been demonstrated (59). A commercial unit with a capacity of about 136,000 t/yr of propylene from ethylene via 2-butene has been in operation in the Gulf Coast since 1985 (60,61). In this process, ethylene is first dimerized to 2-butene foUowed by metathesis to yield propylene. Since this is a two-stage process, 2-butene can be produced from the first stage, if needed. In the dimerization step, about 95% purity of 2-butene is achieved at 90% ethylene conversion. 

Olefin Metathesis. The olefin metathesis (dismutation) reaction (30), discovered by Eleuterio (31), converts olefins to lower and higher molecular weight olefins. For example, propylene is converted into ethylene and butene... 

Metathesis is the rupture and reformation of carbon-carbon bonds—for example, of propylene into ethylene plus butene. Catalysts are oxides, carbonyls, or sulfides of Mo, W, or Re. 

Another metathesis polymerization procedure uses terminal dienes such as hexa-1,5-diene (16) (acyclic diene metathesis (ADMET)). Here again, the escape of the gaseous reaction product, i.e. ethylene, ensures the irreversible progress of the reaction ... 

Table 8-5 indicates the wide variety of catalysts that can effect this type of disproportionation reaction, and Figure 8-7 is a flow diagram for the Phillips Co. triolefm process for the metathesis of propylene to produce 2-butene and ethylene. Anderson and Brown have discussed in depth this type of reaction and its general utilization. The utility with respect to propylene is to convert excess propylene to olefins of greater economic value. More discussion regarding olefin metathesis is noted in Chapter 9. 

Figure 8-7. The Phillips Petroleum Co. process for producing 2-butene and ethylene from propylene (1) metathesis reactor, (2) fractionator (to separate propylene recycle from propane), (3, 4) fractionator for separating ethylene, butylenes, and Cg. ...

Olefin metatheses are equilibrium reactions among the two-reactant and two-product olefin molecules. If chemists design the reaction so that one product is ethylene, for example, they can shift the equilibrium by removing it from the reaction medium. Because of the statistical nature of the metathesis reaction, the equilibrium is essentially a function of the ratio of the reactants and the temperature. For an equimolar mixture of ethylene and 2-butene at 350°C, the maximum conversion to propylene is 63%. Higher conversions require recycling unreacted butenes after fractionation. This reaction was first used to produce 2-butene and ethylene from propylene (Chapter 8). The reverse reaction is used to prepare polymer-grade propylene form 2-butene and ethylene ... 

In this process, which has been jointly developed by Institute Francais du Petrole and Chinese Petroleum Corp., the C4 feed is mainly composed of 2-butene (1-butene does not favor this reaction but reacts differently with olefins, producing metathetic by-products). The reaction between 1-butene and 2-butene, for example, produces 2-pentene and propylene. The amount of 2-pentene depends on the ratio of 1-butene in the feedstock. 3-Hexene is also a by-product from the reaction of two butene molecules (ethylene is also formed during this reaction). The properties of the feed to metathesis are shown in Table 9-1. Table 9-2 illustrates the results from the metatheses reaction at two different conversions. The main by-product was 2-pentene. Olefins in the range of Ce-Cg and higher were present, but to a much lower extent than C5. 

Figure 9-3. A flow diagram showing the metathesis process for producing polymer grade propylene from ethylene and 2-butene.

While diene metathesis or diyne metathesis are driven by the loss of a (volatile) alkene or alkyne by-product, enyne metathesis (Fig. 2) cannot benefit from this contributing feature to the AS term of the reaction, since the event is entirely atom economic. Instead, the reaction is driven by the formation of conjugated dienes, which ensures that once these dienes have been formed, the process is no longer a reversible one. Enyne metathesis can also be considered as an alkylidene migration reaction, because the alkylidene unit migrates from the alkene part to one of the alkyne carbons. The mechanism of enyne metathesis is not well described, as two possible complexation sites (alkene or alkyne) exist for the ruthenium carbene, leading to different reaction pathways, and the situation is further complicated when the reaction is conducted under an atmosphere of ethylene. Despite its enormous potential to form mul-... 

Clark and coworkers utilized enyne RCM for constructing the AB ring fragment of the manzamine alkaloids (Scheme 83) [177]. Exposing metathesis precursor 423 and ethylene gas to catalyst A provided bicycle 424 in near quantitative yield. Regioselective hydroboration of the vinyl group in 424, followed... 

What can ADMET offer in terms of tailoring the properties of a given polymer The answer lies in the clean chemistry of metathesis. If a metathesis active a,co-diene can be synthesized, then a known polymer can be produced. Few other polymerization techniques are so versatile, yet so precise. In recent years, our group has focused attention toward modeling polymers and copolymers made from ethylene in particular, we have been examining the effect of precise placement of alkyl and polar branches sequentially along tire backbone of polyethylene. 

The cometathesis product contains 10-15% of the wanted C10-C13 - /-olefins, which are separated from the undesired olefins by fractional distillation. The first runnings and the tailing olefins are recycled into the metathesis reactor so that at least all of the ethylene oligomers are transformed into the wanted C10-C,3 n-olefins, with the olefins of course having internal double bonds. 

Molybdenum allyl complexes react with surface OH groups to produce catalysts active for olefin metathesis.34 35 Using silica as a support for the heterog-enization of Ti and Zr complexes for the polymerization of ethylene did not give clear results.36 In these cases, HY zeolite appeared to be a more suitable support. The comparable productivity of the zeolite-supported catalyst with... 

One problem in the combination of metathesis transformations using alkenes is the fact that they are equilibrium reactions. In contrast, metathesis reactions of ene-ynes are irreversible as they give 1,3-butadienes, which are usually inert under the reaction conditions. Thus, the combination of a RCM and a ROM of ene-ynes of type 6/3-48 in the presence of an alkene (e. g., ethylene) led to 6/3-49 in good yield (Scheme 6/3.13) [242]. In these transformations the terminal triple bond reacts first. The process is not suitable for the formation of six-ring heterocycles. 

---