Easy, Green and Safe Carbonylation Reactions through Zeolite-Catalyzed Carbon Monoxide Production from Formic Acid

Abstract

Zeolites with the right shape and acid site density and strength, such as certain ZSM-5 forms, were able to cleanly decompose formic acid to carbon monoxide (CO), and the latter could be directly used in palladium-catalyzed carbonylation reactions. A simple two-reactor system was designed to produce CO conveniently and then further react this gas in a safe way. The two-reactor system is particularly cheap, easy to set up and use. In addition, the carbonylation conditions without pressure allowed for very efficient CO incorporation, with only 1% of palladium(II) chloride (PdCl 2) and Xantphos.