Hydroformylation of recalcitrating biorenewable compounds containing trisubstituted double bonds

Abstract

Hydroformylation is a useful tool in industrial organic syntheses and it is easily applied to substrates containing terminal CC double bonds. Applying this reaction to substrates containing other functionalities or trisubstituted CC double bonds is not straightforward. Herein, the hydroformylation of several biorenewable alkenes with these features, namely: α-terpineol, terpinen-4-ol, limonene (double hydroformylation), and α-ionone, is presented. Only by the judicious choice of the catalytic system and reaction conditions, was it possible to obtain good yields and selectivity for these substrates.