The Production of Propene Oxide: Catalytic Processes and Recent Developments

Propene oxide, which is one of the major commodity chemicals used in chemical industry, desperately requires a new process for its production, because of the disadvantages that are encountered with the currently available processes. This paper discusses the existing processes used for the production of propene oxide-the chlorohydrin and hydroperoxide processes-and their advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, the new processes and catalysts under development for the propene oxide production are discussed, as well as the challenges that are still limiting the applications of some of those prospects. The most important new developments for the production of propene oxide discussed in this paper are: the hydrogen peroxide combination process, the ethene oxide alike silver catalysts, the molten salt systems, and the gold-titania catalyst systems.