Tandem Hydroformylation/Hydrogenation of Alkenes to Normal Alcohols Using Rh/Ru Dual Catalyst or Ru Single Component Catalyst

The catalyst system for tandem hydroformylation/hydrogenation of terminal alkenes to the corresponding homologated normal alcohol was developed. The reaction mechanism for the Rh/Ru dual catalyst was investigated by real-time IR monitoring experiments and 31P NMR spectroscopy, which proved the mutual orthogonality of Rh-catalyzed hydroformylation and Ru-catalyzed hydrogenation. Detailed investigation about Ru-catalyzed hydrogenation of undecanal under H2/CO pressure clarified different kinetics from the hydrogenation under H2 and gave a clue to design more active hydrogenation catalysts under H2/CO atmosphere. The solely Ru-catalyzed normal selective hydroformylation/hydrogenation is also reported.