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.