Improving Aqueous Biphasic Hydroformylation of Unsaturated Oleochemicals Using a Jet‐Loop‐Reactor

Fatty Acids and their Derivatives as Renewable Platform Molecules for the Chemical Industry

Oils and fats of vegetable and animal origin remain an important renewable feedstock for the chemical industry. Their industrial use has increased during the last 10 years from 31 to 51 million tonnes annually. Remarkable achievements made in the field of oleochemistry in this timeframe are summarized herein, including the reduction of fatty esters to ethers, the selective oxidation and oxidative cleavage of C-C double bonds, the synthesis of alkyl-branched fatty compounds, the isomerizing hydroformylation and alkoxycarbonylation, and olefin metathesis. The use of oleochemicals for the synthesis of a great variety of polymeric materials has increased tremendously, too. In addition to lipases and phospholipases, other enzymes have found their way into biocatalytic oleochemistry. Important achievements have also generated new oil qualities in existing crop plants or by using microorganisms optimized by metabolic engineering.

Another Critical Look at Three-Phase Catalysis

Three-phase catalysis, for example, hydrogenation, is a special branch of chemical reactions involving a hydrogen reactant (gas) and a solvent (liquid) in the presence of a metal porous catalyst (solid) to produce a liquid product. Currently, many reactors are being used for three-phase catalysis from packed bed to slurry vessel; the uniqueness for this type of reaction in countless processes is the requirement of transferring gas into liquid, as yet there is not a unified system of quantifying and comparing reactor performances. This article reviews current methodologies in carrying out such heterogeneous catalysis in different reactors and focuses on how to enhance reactor performance from gas transfer perspectives. This article also suggests that the mass transfer rate over energy dissipation may represent a fairer method for comparison of reactor performance accounting for different types/designs of reactors and catalyst structures as well as operating conditions.