Silicon Carbide Supported Liquid Phase (SLP) Hydroformylation Catalysis – Effective Reaction Kinetics from Continuous Gas‐phase Operation

Abstract

AbstractThe hydroformylation reaction is one of the most important applications of homogeneous catalysis on an industrial scale with worldwide production capacities exceeding 15 Mio tons per year. Efficient catalyst immobilization becomes mandatory for such large‐scale processes. In this work, a supported liquid phase (SLP)‐type catalyst on a silicon carbide support material was applied in the continuous Rh‐bpp (bpp=biphephos) catalyzed gas‐phase hydroformylation of but‐1‐ene. A parameter variation was carried out in the pressure range from 0.5 to 3.0 bara for but‐1‐ene, 0.5 to 5 bara for H2, 0.5 to 5 bara for CO, and in the temperature range from 90 to 125 °C. Activation energies were determined for the individual reactions showing a shift in activation energy most significantly for the hydroformylation to n‐pentanal for temperatures of 110 °C and above. For all substrates the effective reaction orders were calculated and employed in a power‐law rate model giving good agreement of measured and modeled data within a ±20 % error margin. Similar results were obtained using a microkinetic model.