Ionic liquid continued

The cost of the ionic liquid is still a limiting factor. However, the commercial availability of these liquids has improved considerably over the last few years and prices have already gone down significantly [20], This development can be expected to continue as ionic liquids continue to make their transition from curiosities to commodities [79]. In any case the cost of the ionic liquid has to be weighed against that of current chemicals or catalysts. If the ionic liquid can be recycled and if its lifetime proved to be long enough, then its initial price is probably not the critical point. 

Ionic liquids represent a unique class of reaction media for catalytic processes, and their application in catalysis has entered a period of exploding growth. The number of catalytic reactions involving ionic liquids continues to increase rapidly. These liquids offer promising solutions to the problems associated with conventional organic solvents the potential advantages may include enhanced reaction rates, improved chemo- and regioselectivities, and facile separation of products and catalyst recovery. 

Room temperature ionic liquids continue to attract interest by both fundamental and applied researchers. Several general review articles have been published in recent years that describe not only their physical properties but also discuss how these physical properties can be applied for solvents used in separations and as replacement for organic solvents for homogeneously-catalyzed reactions. In this review, we focus our attention on those physical... 

Ionic liquids (continued) for Heck coupling, 1, 870 for homogeneous-multi-phase catalysis, 1, 856 for hydroformylations, 11, 450 for hydrogenations, 1, 857 for kinetic study monitoring, 1, 517 metalloorganic ILs, 1, 853 and molten salts, 1, 848... 

Ionic liquids continue to receive increasing interest as alternative solvents for catalysis and the historical developments in the field are described in Section 1.4. 

The number of available ionic liquids continues to grow at an ever increasing rate, however only few are used by the wider community. At the same time, it has become fashionable to label charged compounds that not long ago would have been (appropriately) described as sticky oil, as ionic liquids, and a more considerate use of the term would sometimes be desirable. 

Interest in the development and applications of ionic liquids continues to grow rapidly, one of the main reasons being that these solvents have implications for green chemistry (see Box 9.2). The first generation of ionic liquids were salts containing alkylpyridinium or dialkylimidazolium cations (Fig. 9.8) with [AlCU] (9.20) or [AbCl ] (9.21) anions. 

As in stoichiometric organic reactions, the application of nonvolatile ionic liquids can contribute to the reduction of atmospheric pollution. This is of special relevance for non-continuous reactions, in which complete recovery of a volatile organic solvent is usually difficult to integrate into the process. 

Another interesting recent development is the continuous, Rh-catalyzed hydroformylation of 1-octene in the unconventional biphasic system [BMIM][PF6]/scC02, described by Cole-Hamilton et al. [84]. This specific example is described in more detail, together with other recent work in ionic liquid/scC02 systems, in Section 5.4. 

To produce reliable data on the lifetime and overall activity of the ionic catalyst system, a loop reactor was constructed and the reaction was carried out in continuous mode [105]. Some results of these studies are presented in Section 5.3, together with much more detailed information about the processing of biphasic reactions with an ionic liquid catalyst phase. 

The combination of ionic liquids with supercritical carbon dioxide is an attractive approach, as these solvents present complementary properties (volatility, polarity scale.). Compressed CO2 dissolves quite well in ionic liquid, but ionic liquids do not dissolve in CO2. It decreases the viscosity of ionic liquids, thus facilitating mass transfer during catalysis. The separation of the products in solvent-free form can be effective and the CO2 can be recycled by recompressing it back into the reactor. Continuous flow catalytic systems based on the combination of these two solvents have been reported [19]. This concept is developed in more detail in Section 5.4. 

Scaling up Ionic Liquid Technology from Laboratory to Continuous Pilot Plant Operation... 

Flowever, information concerning the characteristics of these systems under the conditions of a continuous process is still very limited. From a practical point of view, the concept of ionic liquid multiphasic catalysis can be applicable only if the resultant catalytic lifetimes and the elution losses of catalytic components into the organic or extractant layer containing products are within commercially acceptable ranges. To illustrate these points, two examples of applications mn on continuous pilot operation are described (i) biphasic dimerization of olefins catalyzed by nickel complexes in chloroaluminates, and (ii) biphasic alkylation of aromatic hydrocarbons with olefins and light olefin alkylation with isobutane, catalyzed by acidic chloroaluminates. 

Despite all the advantages of this process, one main limitation is the continuous catalyst carry-over by the products, with the need to deactivate it and to dispose of wastes. One way to optimize catalyst consumption and waste disposal was to operate the reaction in a biphasic system. The first difficulty was to choose a good solvent. N,N -Dialkylimidazolium chloroaluminate ionic liquids proved to be the best candidates. These can easily be prepared on an industrial scale, are liquid at the reaction temperature, and are very poorly miscible with the products. They play the roles both of the catalyst solvent and of the co-catalyst, and their Lewis acidities can be adjusted to obtain the best performances. The solubility of butene in these solvents is high enough to stabilize the active nickel species (Table 5.3-3), the nickel... 

A similar catalytic dimerization system has been investigated [40] in a continuous flow loop reactor in order to study the stability of the ionic liquid solution. The catalyst used is the organometallic nickel(II) complex (Hcod)Ni(hfacac) (Hcod = cyclooct-4-ene-l-yl and hfacac = l,l,l,5,5,5-hexafluoro-2,4-pentanedionato-0,0 ), and the ionic liquid is an acidic chloroaluminate based on the acidic mixture of 1-butyl-4-methylpyridinium chloride and aluminium chloride. No alkylaluminium is added, but an organic Lewis base is added to buffer the acidity of the medium. The ionic catalyst solution is introduced into the reactor loop at the beginning of the reaction and the loop is filled with the reactants (total volume 160 mL). The feed enters continuously into the loop and the products are continuously separated in a settler. The overall activity is 18,000 (TON). The selectivity to dimers is in the 98 % range and the selectivity to linear octenes is 52 %. 

BP Chemicals studied the use of chloroaluminates as acidic catalysts and solvents for aromatic hydrocarbon allcylation [41]. At present, the existing AICI3 technology (based on red oil catalyst) is still used industrially, but continues to suffer from poor catalyst separation and recycling [42]. The aim of the work was to evaluate the AlCl3-based ionic liquids, with the emphasis placed on the development of a clean... 

The use of acidic chloroaluminates as alternative liquid acid catalysts for the allcy-lation of light olefins with isobutane, for the production of high octane number gasoline blending components, is also a challenge. This reaction has been performed in a continuous flow pilot plant operation at IFP [44] in a reactor vessel similar to that used for dimerization. The feed, a mixture of olefin and isobutane, is pumped continuously into the well stirred reactor containing the ionic liquid catalyst. In the case of ethene, which is less reactive than butene, [pyridinium]Cl/AlCl3 (1 2 molar ratio) ionic liquid proved to be the best candidate (Table 5.3-4). 

Continuous Reactions in an Ionic Liquid/Compressed CO2 System... 

During the continuous reaction, alkene, CO, H2, and CO2 were separately fed into the reactor containing the ionic liquid catalyst solution. The products and uncon-... 

Figure 5.4-3 shows the results of a lifetime study for Wilke s catalyst dissolved, activated, and immobilized in the [EMIM][(CF3S02)2N]/compressed CO2 system. Over a period of more than 61 h, the active catalyst showed remarkably stable activity while the enantioselectivity dropped only slightly. These results clearly indicate - at least for the hydrovinylation of styrene with Wilke s catalyst - that an ionic liquid catalyst solution can show excellent catalytic performance in continuous product extraction with compressed CO2. 

Rhodium catalyzed carbonylations of olefins and methanol can be operated in the absence of an alkyl iodide or hydrogen iodide if the carbonylation is operated in the presence of iodide-based ionic liquids. In this chapter, we will describe the historical development of these non-alkyl halide containing processes beginning with the carbonylation of ethylene to propionic acid in which the omission of alkyl hahde led to an improvement in the selectivity. We will further describe extension of the nonalkyl halide based carbonylation to the carbonylation of MeOH (producing acetic acid) in both a batch and continuous mode of operation. In the continuous mode, the best ionic liquids for carbonylation of MeOH were based on pyridinium and polyalkylated pyridinium iodide derivatives. Removing the highly toxic alkyl halide represents safer, potentially lower cost, process with less complex product purification. 

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