LT: Heterogeneous Catalysis in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

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9873553 Abraham Many commercial chemical syntheses are carried out in organic liquid solvents using homogeneous catalysts. The large-scale use of organic solvents has been questioned with respect to long-term environmental impacts. The objective of this research is to explore the use of supercritical carbon dioxide as an environmentally benign reaction solvent, and in particular, its use for the hydroformylation of propylene. The use of CO2 as a reaction solvent offers optimal environmental performance because CO2 does not deplete the ozone layer, does not contribute to ground level smog and will not contribute to global warming. Because of solubility limitations, it is unlikely that current homogeneous catalysts can be made sufficiently soluble to be effective in CO2. The use of a heterogeneous catalysis is proposed and that will also simplify the downstream operations by eliminating the catalysis recovery step and allowing the reaction to be performed in a simple packed bed reactor. In order to demonstrate that hydroformylation of polypropylene can be accomplished in supercritical CO2 and that a process based on this technology is environmentally superior and economically competitive with current technology, the researcher will (1) prepare selected heterogeneous catalysts that have successfully been used for vapor phase hydroformylation and test these catalysts for their activity in supercritical carbon dioxide and (2) determine the impact of CO2 on the reaction mechanism and its role in controlling the product selectivity and the rate of propylene conversion. This grant is made pursuant to the joint NSF/Lucent Technologies Industrial Ecology Research Fellowships Program 1998.***