Hydroformylation of olefins over tethered rhodium catalysts

Abstract

This thesis reports the application of the Rhodium complexes immobilized on a uniform mesoporous material MCM-41 on the hydroformylation of 1-hexene, 1-octene and styrene. The effect of functional group, reaction pressure and PPh3 has been studied. RhCl(PPh3)3/MCM-41(NH2) shows the best activity among all of the supported and unsupported catalysts. Increasing the reaction pressure can acquire higher conversion and regioselectivity for all the catalytic reactions. The additional PPh3 in the reaction mixture can improve not only the activity but also the regioselectivity of the MCM-41-tethered rhodium complex catalysts. The phenomena are explained from electronic, steric and the alkene structure effects.