Rhodium complexes, catalysts based

The low-pressure oxo process based on rhodium complex catalysts has largely replaced the older, high-pressure process, which used cobalt carbonyls as catalyst. The low-pressure process is operated at about 100°C and 200psig. A new generation oxo process with bisphosphite modified rhodium catalyst is shown schematically in Fig. 10.5. 

The present interest in asymmetric catalysis was demonstrated by awarding Nobel prizes to three winners W. S. Knowles (USA) for elaboration of rhodium complex catalysts effective in asymmetric synthesis of anti-Parkinson medicine, R. Noyori (Japan) for elaboration of a new catalytic system based on chiral ruthenium-phosphine complex catalysts that are very effective in hydrogenation reactions, and B. Sharpless (USA) for elaboration of epoxidation and other reactions under the action of chiral titanium complexes. 

The switch from the conventional cobalt complex catalyst to a new rhodium-based catalyst represents a technical advance for producing aldehydes by olefin hydroformylation with CO, ie, by the oxo process (qv) (82). A 200 t/yr CSTR pilot plant provided scale-up data for the first industrial,... 

A new homogeneous process for hydroformylation of olefins using a water-soluble catalyst has been developed (40). The catalyst is based on a rhodium complex and utilizes a water-soluble phosphine such as tri(M-sulfophenyl)phosphine. The use of an aqueous phase simplifies the separation of the catalyst and products (see Oxo process). 

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. 

The rhodium complexes are excellent catalysts for hydrogenation of NBR. At low temperature and pressure, high catalyst concentrations are used to obtain a better rate of reactions. Due to higher selectivity of the reaction, pressure and temperature can be increased to very high values. Consequently the rhodium concentration can be greatly reduced, which leads to high turnover rates. The only practical drawback of Rh complex is its high cost. This has initiated the development of techniques for catalyst removal and recovery (see Section VU), as well as alternate catalyst systems based on cheaper noble metals, such as ruthenium or palladium (see Sections IV.A and B). 

These examples are part of a broader design scheme to combine catalytic metal complexes with a protein as chiral scaffold to obtain a hybrid catalyst combining the catalytic potential of the metal complex with the enantioselectivity and evolvability of the protein host [11]. One of the first examples of such systems combined a biotinylated rhodium complex with avidin to obtain an enantioselective hydrogenation catalyst [28]. Most significantly, it has been shovm that mutation-based improvements of enantioselectivity are possible in these hybrid catalysts as for enzymes (Figure 3.7) [29]. 

The most recent catalysts that operate under thermal conditions were then based on the premise that a Cp M fragment with ligands that dissociate under thermal conditions could be a catalyst for alkane borylation. After a brief study of Cp IrH4 and Cp Ir(ethylene)2, Dr. Chen studied related rhodium complexes. Ultimately, he proposed that the Cp Rh(ri" -C6Me6) complex would dissociate CeMce as an iimocent side product, and that Cp Rh(Bpin)2 from oxidative addition of pinBBpin (pin=pinacolate) would be the active catalyst. The overall catalytic... 

The catalysts used in hydroformylation are typically organometallic complexes. Cobalt-based catalysts dominated hydroformylation until 1970s thereafter rhodium-based catalysts were commerciahzed. Synthesized aldehydes are typical intermediates for chemical industry [5]. A typical hydroformylation catalyst is modified with a ligand, e.g., tiiphenylphoshine. In recent years, a lot of effort has been put on the ligand chemistry in order to find new ligands for tailored processes [7-9]. In the present study, phosphine-based rhodium catalysts were used for hydroformylation of 1-butene. Despite intensive research on hydroformylation in the last 50 years, both the reaction mechanisms and kinetics are not in the most cases clear. Both associative and dissociative mechanisms have been proposed [5-6]. The discrepancies in mechanistic speculations have also led to a variety of rate equations for hydroformylation processes. 

Rhodium complexes based on the chiral ligand (120) have been used in the asymmetric hydrogenation of functionalized chelating olefins in methanol and water. The results are compared to those obtained using the corresponding non-sulfonated catalysts in water all sulfonated... 

It was found that, in a nonpolar medium, the crotyl rhodium complex 1 is relatively inactive as a codimerization catalyst. However, it becomes very active in the presence of a small amount of donors such as alcohol. The activity generally increases linearly with the amount of the added donors and then depends on the strength of the donors, either leveling off or decreasing with further increases in the donor concentration. Strong donors improve the activity at lower concentration but inhibit the reaction at higher concentration. Some representative donors and their rate enhancement efficiency are shown in Table VI. The relationships between the concentrations of various donors and the reaction rates are summarized in Figure 5. The rate enhancement efficiency (expressed as relative reactivity) of a donor was measured based on the maximum rate attainable by addition of a suitable quantity of the donor to the reaction mixture, i.e., the maximum in the activity curve of Fig. 5. The results in Table VI show that those donors with p Ka values (25) between -5 and... 

Butyne-l,4-diol has been hydrogenated to the 2-butene-diol (97), mesityl oxide to methylisobutylketone (98), and epoxides to alcohols (98a). The rhodium complex and a related solvated complex, RhCl(solvent)(dppb), where dppb = l,4-bis(diphenylphosphino)butane, have been used to hydrogenate the ketone group in pyruvates to give lactates (99) [Eq. (15)], and in situ catalysts formed from rhodium(I) precursors with phosphines can also catalyze the hydrogenation of the imine bond in Schiff bases (100) (see also Section III,A,3). 

The use of water-soluble ligands was referred to previously for both ruthenium and rhodium complexes. As in the case of ruthenium complexes, the use of an aqueous biphasic system leads to a clear enhancement of selectivity towards the unsaturated alcohol [34]. Among the series of systems tested, the most convenient catalysts were obtained from mixtures of OsCl3 3H20 with TPPMS (or better still TPPTS) as they are easily prepared and provide reasonable activities and modest selectivities. As with their ruthenium and rhodium analogues, the main advantage is the ease of catalyst recycling with no loss of activity or selectivity. However, the ruthenium-based catalysts are far superior. 

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