Improving the selectivity for the synthesis of two renewable platform chemicals via olefin metathesis

Abstract

The self-metathesis of methyl 10-undecenoate as well as its cross-metathesis with methyl acrylate was investigated in detail by a systematic variation of the reaction conditions. Unsaturated α,ω-diesters with a chain length of 20 and 12 carbon atoms were thus obtained, respectively. Four different metathesis catalysts were investigated under solvent-free conditions at catalyst loadings ranging from 0.05 mol% to 1 mol% and at temperatures ranging from 30 °C to 90 °C. In the case of the self-metathesis reactions quantitative conversions were obtained with all catalysts, but the second generation metathesis catalysts revealed high amounts of olefin isomerization side reactions at higher temperatures. Using a small quantity of the hydrogen acceptor 1,4-benzoquinone, the isomerization process was almost completely suppressed. Thus, the second generation catalysts allowed for high conversions at very low catalyst loadings. For the cross-metathesis reaction, an interesting temperature and catalyst loading dependent selectivity was observed with the second generation catalysts. Moreover, due to these optimizations, we were able to run these cross-metathesis reactions with a 1:1 ratio of the reactants and low catalysts loadings. This is an improvement over described literature procedures. Thus, we report on the detailed investigation of the described self- and cross-metathesis reactions leading to practical and optimized reaction conditions for the synthesis of unsaturated α,ω-diesters monomers from renewable raw materials in an efficient catalytic manner.