Other industrially used aqueous biphasic processes

2 Other Industrially Used Aqueous-biphasic Processes 

Hydroformylation comprises the state-of-the-art of bulk chemical production via aqueous-biphasic processes. At present five plants produce worldwide some 800,000 tpy of oxo products [1], Another bulk process - the hydrodimerization of butadiene and water, a variant of telomerization - is mn by Kururay with a capacity of 5000 tpy (Equation 5.2 [3 lb,36]). 

The reaction product of telomerization is 2,7-octadiene-l-ol. In subsequent steps this dienol may be converted to 1-octanol by hydrogenation or hydrogenated/dehydrogenated to 1-octenal. This unsaturated aldehyde again can be hydroformylated to yield nonadialdehyde and then hydrogenated to nonadiol. 

The remarkably versatile Ci building block HCN may be used in the aqueous two-phased hydrocyanation, too (Equation 5.3 [37]). Also, some fine chemicals such as intermediates for vitamins, phenyl acetic acid, etc. are manufactured on an industrial scale using this technology (Equations 5.4 and 5.5 [12e,31b,38]). 

the Suzuki cross coupling of aryl halides and arylboronic acids is also carried out in aqueous-biphasic operation starting from chlorinated derivatives instead of their more costly bromo or iodo equivalents (Equation 5.6, [39]). 

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The consequence of low alkene solubihty is in that industrially the RCH-RP process can be used only for the hydroformylation of C2-C4 olefins. In all other cases the overah production rate becomes unacceptably low. This is what makes the hydroformylation of higher olefins one of the central problems in aqueous/organic biphasic catalysis. Many solutions to this problem have been suggested (some of them will be discussed below), however, any procedure which increases the mutual solubihty of the organic components and the aqueous ingredients (co-solvents, surfactants) may... 

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