Vinyl acetate synthesis reaction

Moiseev and Vargaftik (36) have reported that deuterium is not incorporated into either vinyl acetate or ethylidene diacetate (III) when the vinyl acetate synthesis reaction is carried out in deuteroacetic acid. They considered this observation as evidence for a process such as Reaction 4 in which the final carbonium ion (VII) is forming products either by losing a proton or by reacting with acetate to give ethylidene diacetate (III). 

The first set of data has been reported by Emig et al. (1980) and refers to the vinyl acetate synthesis reaction catalyzed by zinc acetate supported on activated carbon. A comparison between the boundaries predicted by the generalized criterion and the experimental findings is shown in Figure 6. The open and closed circles refer to safe and runaway operating conditions,... 

In order to probe the influence of Au and KOAc on the vinyl acetate synthesis chemistry, four different catalysts were synthesized. All of these catalysts were prepared in a manner exemplified in prior patent technology [Bissot, 1977], and each contained the same palladium loading in an egg-shell layer on the surface of a spherical silica support. The palladium content in the catalyst was easily controlled by adjusting the solution strength of palladium chloride (PdClj) added to the porous silica beads prior to its precipitation onto the support by reaction with sodium metasilicate (Na SiOj). The other two catalyst components (Au and KOAc) were either present or absent in order to complete the independent evaluation of their effect on the process chemistry, e.g., (1) Pd-i-Au-hKOAc, (2) Pd-i-KOAc, (3) Pd-hAu, and (4) Pd only. 

The effect of the catalyst composition upon the catalyst activity, selectivity, and reaction pathways was examined using a conventional high pressure fixed reactor and a TAP reactor. Particular emphasis was placed upon the effect of Au and KOAc on the acceleration or impedance of the pathways associated with vinyl acetate synthesis. A summary of the key findings is given below ... 

Cupric Chloride can be used as a reoxidant in the vinyl acetate synthesis but other products are also produced. In fact, with increasing Cu(II) concentration, the side products can easily be made the major products 16>. The side products are chloro acetates and diacetates and they probably arise from a reaction of the palladium acetate-olefin adduct with cupric chloride or acetate. 

Cupric chloride, if present in concentrations above ca. 0.5 M, may cause side reactions to occur in the olefin aiylation reaction similar to those that occur with cupric chloride in the vinyl acetate synthesis mentioned above. The side reaction produces 2-arylethyl chlorides and these products may be made the major ones if cupric chloride is present to the extent of about 2M in 10% aqueous acetic acid solution 29>. The mixed solvent is required to obtain the necessary solubility of the cupric chloride. This is a general reaction useful for producing a variety of 2-arylalkyl halides. For example, 3-phenyl-2-chloropropionaldehyde is obtained in 63% yield by the reaction of phenylpalladium chloride , cupric chloride and acrolein. 

Modern catalysts for vinyl-acetate synthesis contain Au in the chemical formulation, which manifests in much higher activity and selectivity. This is reflected by fundamental changes in the kinetics, such as for example switching the reaction order of ethylene from negative to positive [8]. As a consequence, in more recent studies the formation of vinyl acetate can be described conveniently by a power-law kinetics involving only ethylene and oxygen ... 

In some of the studies on the vinyl acetate synthesis from ethylene, high boiling products were reported (9, 10, 24, 25, 26). These included ethylidene diacetate (III), ethylene glycol monoacetate (IV) and ethylene glycol diacetate (V). Little attention has been given to the reactions by which these products are formed. No dioxygenated products have been reported previously when higher olefins have been used. 

In vinyl acetate synthesis in the presence of cupric chloride according to eq. (4), other by-products are mono- and diacetates of glycol and /5-chloroethyl acetate which under certain conditions become the predominant products [22]. In order to avoid side reactions, chloride-free catalyst systems such as Pd"/H9PMo6V6O40 have been described [23],... 

The case study of vinyl acetate synthesis emphasises the benefits of an integrated process design and plantwide control strategy based on the analysis of the Reactor / Separation / Recycles structure. The core is the chemical reactor, whose behaviour in recycle depends on the kinetics and selectivity of the catalyst, as well as on safety and technological constraints. Moreover, the recycle policy depends on the reaction mechanism of the catalytic reaction. 

First-principle quantum chemical methods have advanced to the stage where they can now offer qualitative, as well as, quantitative predictions of structure and energetics for adsorbates on surfaces. Cluster and periodic density functional quantum chemical methods are used to analyze chemisorption and catalytic surface reactivity for a series of relevant commercial chemistries. DFT-predicted adsorption and overall reaction energies were found to be within 5 kcal/mol of the experimentally known values for all systems studied. Activation barriers were over-predicted but still within 10 kcal/mol. More specifically we examined the mechanisms and reaction pathways for hydrocarbon C-H bond activation, vinyl acetate synthesis, and ammonia oxidation. Extrinsic phenomena such as substituent effects, bimetallic promotion, and transient surface precursors, are found to alter adsorbate-surface bonding and surface reactivity. 

The oxidative functionalization of olefins through ir-olefin complexes of palladium also has a long history, including the industrial production of acetaldehyde and vinyl acetate. Related reactions, including the conversion of olefins to vinyl ethers and enamines, have been studied in more recent times for fine chemical synthesis. These oxidative C-0 and C-N bond formations have been conducted with a variety of oxidants, including Oj, and have been studied as both intermolecular and intramolecular processes. 

The fixed-bed reactors are the most commonly used for undertaking industrial heterogeneous catalytic reactions in the basic chemical, petrochemical, and allied industries, such as the carbon monoxide conversion and ammonia synthesis, the ethylene oxide and vinyl acetate synthesis, and many other reactive processes. The design and performances of such kind of reactors have been extensively reported. 

The overall chemical reaction of vinyl acetate synthesis is as follows ... 

Gross-Linking. A variety of PE resins, after their synthesis, can be modified by cross-linking with peroxides, hydrolysis of silane-grafted polymers, ionic bonding of chain carboxyl groups (ionomers), chlorination, graft copolymerization, hydrolysis of vinyl acetate copolymers, and other reactions. 

Alternatively, thermal cracking of acetals or metal-catalyzed transvinylation can be employed. Vinyl acetate or MVE can be employed for transvinylation and several references illustrate the preparation especially of higher vinyl ethers by such laboratory techniques. Special catalysts and conditions are required for the synthesis of the phenol vinyl ethers to avoid resinous condensation products (6,7). Direct reaction of ethylene with alcohols has also been investigated (8). 

Meerwein reactions can conveniently be used for syntheses of intermediates which can be cyclized to heterocyclic compounds, if an appropriate heteroatom substituent is present in the 2-position of the aniline derivative used for diazotization. For instance, Raucher and Koolpe (1983) described an elegant method for the synthesis of a variety of substituted indoles via the Meerwein arylation of vinyl acetate, vinyl bromide, or 2-acetoxy-l-alkenes with arenediazonium salts derived from 2-nitroani-line (Scheme 10-46). In the Meerwein reaction one obtains a mixture of the usual arylation/HCl-addition product (10.9) and the carbonyl compound 10.10, i. e., the product of hydrolysis of 10.9. For the subsequent reductive cyclization to the indole (10.11) the mixture of 10.9 and 10.10 can be treated with any of a variety of reducing agents, preferably Fe/HOAc. 

Compound 168 is a key intermediate for the synthesis of prostaglandin or prostacyclin compounds. Scheme 5-50 shows its preparation via a retro Diels-Alder reaction and subsequent treatment. Using enzyme-catalyzed acetylation, Liu et al.80 succeeded in the asymmetric synthesis of enantiomerically pure (+)/ (—)-156 and (—)-168 from the meso-Aio 164. When treated with vinyl acetate, meso-diol 164 can be selectively acetylated to give (+)-165 in the presence of Candida cyclindracea lipase (CCL). The yield for the reaction is 81%, and the enantiomeric excess of the product is 98.3%. 

Chiacchio et al. (43,44) investigated the synthesis of isoxazolidinylthymines by the use of various C-functionalized chiral nitrones in order to enforce enantioselec-tion in their cycloaddition reactions with vinyl acetate (Scheme 1.3). They found, as in the work of Merino et al. (40), that asymmetric induction is at best partial with dipoles whose chiral auxiliary does not maintain a fixed geometry and so cannot completely direct the addition to the nitrone. After poor results with menthol ester-and methyl lactate-based nitrones, they were able to prepare and separate isoxazo-lidine 8a and its diastereomer 8b in near quantitative yield using the A-glycosyl... 

Among the most commonly applied chiral moiety for nitrones (2) is the N-a-methylbenzyl substituent (Scheme 12.6) (18-25). The nitrones 8 with this substituent are available from 1 -phenethylamine, and the substituent has the advantage that it can be removed from the resulting isoxazolidine products 9 by hydrogeno-lysis. This type of 1,3-dipole has been applied in numerous 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions with alkenes such as styrenes (21,23), allyl alcohol (24), vinyl acetate (20), crotonates (22,25), and in a recent report with ketene acetals (26) for the synthesis of natural products. Reviewing these reactions shows that the a-methylbenzyl group... 

---