Ethylene carbonylation is an important technology in the synthesis of larger chemical intermediates. In this work, we discuss a promoter-free ethylene carbonylation route to propionates over transition metal sulfide catalysts. Industrially, metal sulfides have many uses in hydrotreating and homologation reactions but have been studied minimally for carbonylation. Here, we screened sulfide catalysts including MoS2 and promoted variants, ZrS2, CoS2, PtS2, PdS, and Cu2S for carbonylation activity and performance in batch reactions. Compared to alcohol carbonylation which gives a wide range of products, ethylene carbonylation in water over sulfide catalysts is very clean, in most cases giving only propionic acid and its anhydride, ethanol, and propanaldehyde. Noble metal sulfides are very active towards propanaldehyde, while the MoS2 catalysts are relatively selective to propionic acid. In addition to reporting basic catalyst performance metrics, reactivity will be correlated with specific surface area, catalyst reducibility, and other properties.

Transition metal sulfide catalysts for ethylene carbonylation

249th National Meeting (2015)

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