Direct formation of propanol from a dilute ethylene feed via reductive-hydroformylation using homogeneous rhodium catalysts at low feed pressures Original Research Article

This work details a system for the direct production of propanol from a dilute ethylene stream by reductive hydroformylation catalyzed by soluble rhodium complexes coordinated to tri-aryl or tri-alkyl phosphines. Typically, in commercial production, normal alcohols are produced from primary olefins via a two step process consisting of hydroformylation of the olefins to aldehydes, followed by subsequent hydrogenation of the aldehydes to the corresponding alcohols. This work describes a method to produce propanol directly from dilute ethylene feeds. In addition, the partial pressures of the syngas used in these experiments are significantly lower (approximately an order of magnitude) than reported for nearly all of the other rhodium catalyzed reductive-hydroformylation systems (0.7–70 atm vs. ∼20–700 atm).