Processes hydrocarbonylations

Rhodium Ca.ta.lysts. Rhodium carbonyl catalysts for olefin hydroformylation are more active than cobalt carbonyls and can be appHed at lower temperatures and pressures (14). Rhodium hydrocarbonyl [75506-18-2] HRh(CO)4, results in lower -butyraldehyde [123-72-8] to isobutyraldehyde [78-84-2] ratios from propylene [115-07-17, C H, than does cobalt hydrocarbonyl, ie, 50/50 vs 80/20. Ligand-modified rhodium catalysts, HRh(CO)2L2 or HRh(CO)L2, afford /iso-ratios as high as 92/8 the ligand is generally a tertiary phosphine. The rhodium catalyst process was developed joindy by Union Carbide Chemicals, Johnson-Matthey, and Davy Powergas and has been Hcensed to several companies. It is particulady suited to propylene conversion to -butyraldehyde for 2-ethylhexanol production in that by-product isobutyraldehyde is minimized. 

Often the aldehyde is hydrogenated to the corresponding alcohol. In general, addition of carbon monoxide to a substrate is referred to as carbonylation, but when the substrate is an olefin it is also known as hydroformylation. The eady work on the 0x0 synthesis was done with cobalt hydrocarbonyl complexes, but in 1976 a low pressure rhodium-cataly2ed process was commerciali2ed that gave greater selectivity to linear aldehydes and fewer coproducts. 

The earhest modification of the Oxo process (qv) employed cobalt hydrocarbonyl, HCo(CO)4, as catalyst. The reaction was carried out in the Hquid phase at 130—160°C and 10—20 MPa (1450—2900 psi) to give a ratio of n- to isobutyraldehyde of between 2 1 to 4 1. / -Butyraldehyde, the straight-chain isomer and the precursor of 2-ethylhexanol, was the more valuable product so that a high isomer ratio of n- to isobutyraldehyde was obviously advantageous. 

Hydroformylation, or the 0X0 process, is the reaction of olefins with CO and H9 to make aldehydes, which may subsequently be converted to higher alcohols. The catalyst base is cobalt naph-thenate, which transforms to cobalt hydrocarbonyl in place. A rhodium complex that is more stable and mnctions at a lower temperature is also used. 

Platinum complexes with chiral phosphorus ligands have been extensively used in asymmetric hydroformylation. In most cases, styrene has been used as the substrate to evaluate the efficiency of the catalyst systems. In addition, styrere was of interest as a model intermediate in the synthesis of arylpropionic acids, a family of anti-inflammatory drugs.308,309 Until 1993 the best enantio-selectivities in asymmetric hydroformylation were provided by platinum complexes, although the activities and regioselectivities were, in many cases, far from the obtained for rhodium catalysts. A report on asymmetric carbonylation was published in 1993.310 Two reviews dedicated to asymmetric hydroformylation, which appeared in 1995, include the most important studies and results on platinum-catalogued asymmetric hydroformylation.80,81 A report appeared in 1999 about hydrocarbonylation of carbon-carbon double bonds catalyzed by Ptn complexes, including a proposal for a mechanism for this process.311... 

Also referred to as the oxo process or hydrocarbonylation, hydroformylation is a route to producing an aldehyde from an alkene, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide. This process has been known for approximately 70 years, and it is still economically important because useful compounds are produced in enormous quantities by this means. The reaction is summarized by the following equation ... 

Cobalt hydrocarbonyl is a volatile substance of limited stability at or above ambient temperature. Its tendency to decompose at undesirable sites in a process has posed a severe problem for commercial operations. Consequently, the patent literature contains numerous references to a variety of schemes for selectively removing cobalt from product and converting it to a form suitable for catalytic reuse. 

One process that capitalizes on butadiene, synthesis gas, and methanol as raw materials is BASF s two-step hydrocarbonylation route to adipic acid(3-7). The butadiene in the C4 cut from an olefin plant steam cracker is transformed by a two-stage carbonylation with carbon monoxide and methanol into adipic acid dimethyl ester. Hydrolysis converts the diester into adipic acid. BASF is now engineering a 130 million pound per year commercial plant based on this technology(8,9). Technology drawbacks include a requirement for severe pressure (>4500 psig) in the first cobalt catalyzed carbonylation step and dimethyl adipate separation from branched diester isomers formed in the second carbonylation step. 

The main emphasis has been on the homologation of methanol to ethanol (O. Homologation of substrates other than methanol has up till now been less widely studied. However, there is an increasing interest in the hydrocarbonylation of esters, as is evidenced by e.g. the development of the Halcon process (2 ) for the production of ethyli-dene diacetate as a precursor for vinyl acetate. 

The cobalt is present as a carbonyl derivative and can be directly active in the hydrocarbonylation steps of the process only when a large excess of cobalt is used in the presence of phosphine ligands and iodide promoters (Co/Ru 10/1). In this case the ruthenium is probably mainly involved in the hydrogenation of the aldehydes and their acetals to alcohols (O. 

Reaction of 3,3-disubstituted-l,4-pentadiene 92 with a primary amine under cyclohydrocarbonylation conditions yielded cyclopenta[. ]pyrrole 96 as the predominant product accompanied by a small amount of cyclopentanone 95 (Scheme 15). This unique reaction is proposed to proceed through a cascade hydrocarbonylation-carbonylation process. The first hydrocarbonylation of 92 and the subsequent carbocyclization formed cyclopentanoylmethyl-Rh complex 93. If 93 immediately reacts with molecular hydrogen, 2-methylcyclopentanone 95 is formed. However, if CO insertion takes place faster than the hydrogenolysis, cyclopentanoylacetyl-Rh complex 94 is generated, which undergoes the Paal-Knorr condensation with a primary amine to yield cyclopenta[. ]pyrrole 96. ... 

The hydroformylation of alkenes generally has been considered to be an industrial reaction unavailable to a laboratory scale process. Usually bench chemists are neither willing nor able to carry out such a reaction, particularly at the high pressures (200 bar) necessary for the hydrocarbonylation reactions utilizing a cobalt catalyst. (Most of the previous literature reports pressures in atmospheres or pounds per square inch. All pressures in this chapter are reported in bars (SI) the relationship is 14.696 p.s.i. = 1 atm = 101 325 Pa = 1.013 25 bar.) However, hydroformylation reactions with rhodium require much lower pressures and related carbonylation reactions can be carried out at 1-10 bar. Furthermore, pressure equipment is available from a variety of suppliers and costs less than a routine IR instrument. Provided a suitable pressure room is available, even the high pressure reactions can be carried out safely and easily. The hydroformylation of cyclohexene to cyclohexanecarbaldehyde using a rhodium catalyst is an Organic Syntheses preparation (see Section 4.5.2.5). 

The reaction of alkenes (and alkynes) with synthesis gas (CO + H2) to produce aldehydes, catalyzed by a number of transition metal complexes, is most often referred to as a hydroformylation reaction or the oxo process. The discovery was made using a cobalt catalyst, and although rhodium-based catalysts have received increased attention because of their increased selectivity under mild reaction conditions, cobalt is still the most used catalyst on an industrial basis. The most industrially important hydrocarbonylation reaction is the synthesis of n-butanal from propene (equation 3). Some of the butanal is hydrogenated to butanol, but most is converted to 2-ethylhexanol via aldol and hydrogenation sequences. 

Hydrocarbonylation reactions are multistep catalytic processes (14). For this reason our first problem was to determine in which step asymmetric induction takes place, since models could be very different depending on the step in which asymmetric induction is determined (e.g. in the metal alkyl complex formation or in the final reductive elimination step). 

Most of the growth in our understanding of reactions catalyzed by dicobalt octacarbonyl has resulted from a study of the individual reactions of catalytic intermediates such as cobalt hydrocarbonyl. At much lower temperatures and pressures than are used in the corresponding catalytic processes, cobalt hydrocarbonyl has been found to give rise to similar reactions, but stoichiometrically. The study of these noncatalytic reactions has enhanced our understanding of the corresponding catalytic reactions to the point where we can focus on the reasons for the smaller differences rather than the larger similarities. Because of their importance, a discussion of the... 

Addition of H and CO to alkenes and alkynes catalysed by transition metal complexes is called hydrocarbonylation, and is useful for the syntheses of carboxylic acids, their esters, aldehydes and ketones [1]. Oxidative carbonylation of alkenes and alkynes with Pd(II), treated in Section 11.1.5, differs mechanistically from hydrocarbonylation. Some carbonylation reactions occur at under 1 atm or low pressures, without using a high-pressure laboratory apparatus. Several commercial processes based on hydrocarbonylation have been developed. 

One of the most interesting catalytic reactions to be discovered is the so-called oxo reaction. The oxo reaction consists of the catalytic addition of carbon monoxide and hydrogen to olefins to form, primarily, aldehydes possessing one carbon atom more than the original olefin. This hy-droformylation reaction was developed during World War II by Roelen and co-workers (22) in Germany. While they utilized solid Fischer-Tropsch cobalt-thoria catalyst, it became apparent to them that the hydroformylation reaction was probably a homogeneous catalytic process with either dicobalt octaearbonyl or cobalt hydrocarbonyl as the catalyst. 

Despite the obvious improvements achieved in the hydrocarbonylation of methanol, several problems remain to be solved before a technical realization of this process is achieved. One serious drawback is the formation of side products. Tlie liquid phase contains not only alcohols, aldehydes and acetals but also ethers, acetates, and minor amounts of acetic add accompanied by the... 

Most authors consider acetaldehyde as the primary product of methanol hydro-carbonylation which, depending on the reaction conditions and catalyst system, can be hydrogenated to yield ethanol. The potential of cobalt hydrocarbonyl to reduce aldehydes to alcohols in a homogeneous process in the presence of syngas, was recognized by Wender et al, in 1950 [78]. A mechanism according to Equations (29) and (30) was proposed involving an ethoxy cobalt imermediate. 

The hydrocarbonylation of methyl acetate catalyzed by homogeneous Rh complexes generates 1,1-diacetoxyethane ( ethylidene diacetate ) [61] the formal addition product of acetic anhydride and acetaldehyde. Ethylene diacetate is the predominant by-product of the process. The level of ethylidene diacetate production is directly related to the hydrogen partial pressure in the reactor [62]. 

Addition reactions to olefins can be used both for the construction and for the functionalization of molecules. Accordingly, chiral catalysts have been developed for many different types of reactions, often with very high enantioselectiv-ity. Unfortunately, most either have a narrow synthetic scope or are not yet developed for immediate industrial application due to insufficient activities and/ or productivities. These reactions include hydrocarbonylation [Ilf], hydrosilyla-tion [12 i], hydroboration [12j], hydrocyanation [12 k], Michael addition [11 g, 121, 12 m], Diels-Alder reaction [11 h, 12n] and the insertion of carbenes in C-H bonds [Hi, 12p, 12q, 38], Cyclopropanation [Hi, 12p, 12q] and the isomerization of allylamines [12 s] are already used commercially for the manufacture of Cilastatin (one of the first industrial processes) [12 r], and citronellol and menthol (presently the second largest enantioselective process) [12t] respectively. 

Cobalt is the catalyst most widely employed for hydrocarboxylations and hydroesterifications. The strong similarity to hydroformylation is shown in the catalyst and in the conditions of T and P. In general the three process rates are in the order hydrofor-mylation>hydrocarboxylation>hydroesterification. Like hydroformylation, the high P of CO required, the instability and toxicity of cobalt carbonyl or hydrocarbonyl and the difficulty of catalyst-product separation detract from the overall attractiveness of this reaction . 

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