Metal Monsanto process

An early success story in the field of catalytic asymmetric synthesis is the Monsanto Process for the commercial synthesis of l-DOPA (4) (see Scheme 1), a rare amino acid that is effective in the treatment of Parkinson s disease.57 The Monsanto Process, the first commercialized catalytic asymmetric synthesis employing a chiral transition metal complex, was introduced by W. S. Knowles and coworkers and has been in operation since 1974. This large-scale process for the synthesis of l-DOPA (4) is based on catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation, and its development can be... 

It is now nearly 40 years since the introduction by Monsanto of a rhodium-catalysed process for the production of acetic acid by carbonylation of methanol [1]. The so-called Monsanto process became the dominant method for manufacture of acetic acid and is one of the most successful examples of the commercial application of homogeneous catalysis. The rhodium-catalysed process was preceded by a cobalt-based system developed by BASF [2,3], which suffered from significantly lower selectivity and the necessity for much harsher conditions of temperature and pressure. Although the rhodium-catalysed system has much better activity and selectivity, the search has continued in recent years for new catalysts which improve efficiency even further. The strategies employed have involved either modifications to the rhodium-based system or the replacement of rhodium by another metal, in particular iridium. This chapter will describe some of the important recent advances in both rhodium- and iridium-catalysed methanol carbonylation. Particular emphasis will be placed on the fundamental organometallic chemistry and mechanistic understanding of these processes. 

Re (ii). The "salt effect" is more intriguing. At low lithium concentrations (lithium is the most effective cation) the reaction is first order in the salt concentration and zero order in rhodium, methyl iodide, and carbon monoxide. The rate steeply increases with the lithium concentrations. At high lithium concentrations the rate dependencies equal the Monsanto process, i.e. first order in rhodium and methyl iodide, and zero order in CO. The metal salts are involved in two reactions ... 

The main byproduct forming reactions in the BASF and Monsanto processes are different. In the former it is the liquid phase Fischer-Tropsch-type reaction, that leads to the formation of products such as such as alkyl acetates, methane etc. In the Monsanto process it is the homogeneous water-gas shift reaction that produces C02 and H2 as byproducts. Also note that the Monsanto process is superior in terms of selectivity, metal usage and operating conditions. 

The relevance of the water-gas shift reaction in the petrochemical industry has already been discussed (see Section 1.1). The significance of the water-gas shift reaction in homogeneous systems is twofold. First, it plays a crucial role in stabilizing the rhodium catalyst in the Monsanto process. Second, studies carried out in homogeneous systems employing metals other than rhodium have provided useful mechanistic insights into the heterogeneous water-gas shift reaction. We first discuss the catalytic cycle with 4.1 as one of the catalytic intermediates, and then mechanistic results that are available from an iron-based catalytic system. 

The BASF cobalt/iodide catalyzed process for methanol carbonylation was quite quickly superseded by a rhodium/iodide catalyzed process discovered at Monsanto and first commercialized in 1970 at a plant in Texas City. The Monsanto process was a significant advance and became one of the few large tonnage processes to use a homogeneous transition metal catalyst. It was later... 

The chemistry of acetyl-CoA synthesis is thought to resemble the Monsanto process for acetate synthesis in that a metal center binds a methyl group and CO and the CO undergoes a carbonyl insertion into the methyl-metal bond. Elimination of the acetyl group is catalyzed by a strong nucleophile, iodide in the industrial process and CoA in the biochemical one. Currently, there are two views of the catalytic mechanism. 

There is yet another biochanical reaction involving CO (apart from its role as a transmitter substance in animals) which should be addressed here CO is activated and linked to some Ni-CH moiety in a [Ni(deprotonated ohgopeptide)(CH3)] complex attached to a Ni or Cu car-bonylpolythiolate complex which affords acetyl-CoA via some Ni acetyl system by CO shift and insertion in a manner very similar to the Monsanto process for production of acetic add from CO and methanol. The latter affords methyl groups attached to the metal (Ni here, Ru in the original Monsanto process). This transformation takes place in a Clostridium, namely Moorella thermoacetica. 

Carbonylation of methanol catalyzed by soluble Group IX transition metal complexes remains the dominant method for the commercial production of acetic acid. The Monsanto process stands as one of the major success stories of homogeneous catalysis, and for three decades it was the preferred technology because of the excellent activity and selectivity of the catalyst. It has been demonstrated by workers at Celanese, however, that addition of iodide salts can significantly benefit the process by improving the catalytic reaction rate and catalyst stability at low water concentrations. Many attempts have been made to enhance the activity of... 

Transition metal salts and complexes also serve as homogeneous catalysts. In the Monsanto process, rhodium salts plus iodide convert methanol and carbon monoxide into an industrially useful carboxylic acid, acetic acid. The rhodium metal serves as the primary reaction site it binds the reactants and subsequently unbinds the products. The key reactions at the metal reaction site are called oxidative addition and reductive elimination. 

The Monsanto process that s used to make acetic acid using an Rh-based organo-metallic catalyst. 

While, there are many similarities between the mechanism of the Ir-catalyzed process and that of the Rh-catalyzed stystem, there are important differences. Unlike the dependence of the rate of the Monsanto process on only [Rh] and [CH I], the dependence of BP s iridium system on CO pressure, water, methyl acetate, methyl iodide, ruthenium promoter, and iridium are more complex and nonlinear. In situ IR spectroscopy of the iridium catalyst shows that the predominant species is the anionic Ir(III) methyl complex/flc,ds-[Ir(CH3)(CO)2y (2100 and 2047 cm" ). Instead of occurring by turnover-limiting oxidative addition of Mel, the iridium-catalyzed process occurs by turnover-limiting insertion of CO into the metal-methyl complex. 

Developments to the Original Monsanto Process. The catalytic activity of metals other than the Co, Rh, and Ir triad toward methanol carbonylation has been explored, but with very limited success. Although Ni catalysts have... 

Probably the most important industrial application of a transition-metal nucleophile is the Monsanto process for carbonylating methanol, using soluble rhodium-carbonyl complexes in the presence of iodide. The catalyst is in fact [Rhl2(CO)2] (Forster 1979, and references therein), and the catalytic cycle is shown in Scheme 21. The substrate for the rhodium catalyst is methyl iodide, which oxidatively adds to yield [Rh(Me)(I)3(CO)2] . 

The mechanism of the cobalt- (BASF), rhodium- (Monsanto), and iridium- (Cativa) catalyzed reaction is similar but the rate-determining steps differ and different intermediate catalyst complexes are involved. In all three processes two catalytic cycles occur. One cycle involves the metal carbonyl catalyst (II) and the other the iodide promoter (i). For a better overview only the catalytic cycle of the rhodium-catalyzed Monsanto process is presented in detail (Figure 6.15.4). Initially the rhodium iodide complex is activated with carbon monoxide by forming the catalytic active [Rhi2(CO)2] complex 4. Further the four-coordinated 16-electron complex 4 reacts in the rate-determining step with methyl iodide by oxidative addition to form the six-coordinated 18-electron transition methyl rhodium (I II)... 

In the 1980s Celanese commercialized an improved Monsanto low-water process that uses an additional group I metal iodide that effects an increase in the reaction rate of the late-detenuining insertion of CH3I. In the original Monsanto process relatively high water concentrations have to be applied in the reactor (15 wt%). However, the separation of water and acetic acid is a major energy consumer and limits the unit capacity. Moreover, excess of water causes additional... 

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