Treated Silicate Sorbents for Mercury Removal from Flue Gas

65654 In hydroformylation, an alkene reacts with synthesis gas to form an aldehyde (current worldwide production of aldehydes exceeds 7 million tons/year). Homogeneous rhodium catalysts are used in the production of lower aldehydes because they are the most active and selective catalysts for this reaction. Distillation is used to separate the catalyst from the lower aldehydes. However, for the higher aldehydes, their higher boiling points make distillation impossible; therefore, the rhodium catalysts cannot be separated and inefficient cobalt catalysts must be used. This project will develop technology to allow rhodium catalysts to be used for the higher aldehydes without the need to separate them by distillation. Redox-switchable surfactants will be used to solubilize a water-soluble rhodium catalyst in the nonaqueous reaction phase. Then, the redox-switchable surfactants will then be switched off, allowing the separation of the catalyst into an aqueous phase and the product into a nonaqueous phase for easy catalyst recycle. In Phase I the use of redox-switchable surfactants with a water-soluble rhodium catalyst for the synthesis of higher aldehydes will be investigated. The catalyst/surfactant formulation, operating conditions, and catalyst recovery efficiency and stability will be evaluated, and an economic analysis will be performed to compare the rhodium based process to the current cobalt based system. Commercial Applications And Other Benefits: Biphasic hydroformylation of higher olefins with redox-switchable surfactants would lead to an environmentally clean and much less costly replacement of the current cobalt catalyst system.