A highly active catalyst system for the hydromethoxycarbonylation of olefins

Carbonylation reactions of olefins are a big business for the industry and extremely important for the lifestyle and consumption in every level of industrialized countries all over the world. Besides the hydroformylation, also the homogeneous catalyzed hydroalkoxycarbonylation plays an important role in synthesizing bulk products. For example, tons of methyl methacrylate is synthesized by the hydromethoxycarbonylation of ethylene with the Lucite Alpha process. In this connection we'd like to present an improved catalyst system for the hydroalkoxycarbonylation, which has a higher activity than the state of art ligand 1,2-bis((di-tert-butylphosphino)methyl)-benzene (also called Lucite ligand) and even dibutene a mixtures of octenes containing also tri- and tetra-substituted olefines can be completely converted. This new bidentate ligand system L3 bears at the P-atom a bulky and an amphoteric unit, which lead to a P-chiral molecule with two diastereomers. We could show that the two diastereomers have a different activity and are in equilibrium at elevated temperature.