This work demonstrate the feasibility to use carbon dioxide and alcohols for alkoxycarbonylation processes of olefins without any additional strong reductant. A number of aliphatic olefins as well as styrenes can be transformed in high yields to industrially relevant carboxylic acid esters, for example, methyl propionate. In this process, carbon dioxide is reduced by the parent alcohol using convenient triruthenium dodecacarbonyl. The present catalyst system does not need any sensitive ligands or expensive additives. Notably, in the current ruthenium-catalysed alkoxycarbonylation process, the use of carbon dioxide and alcohols works much better than the combination of carbon monoxide and alcohols. Conceptually, it is shown that toxic carbon monoxide can be replaced by CO₂. We estimate that this novel methodology is applicable to other carbonylation reactions too. Therefore, we anticipate that this work will contribute substantially to the development of next-generation CO₂ utilization.

Lipeng Wu, Qiang Liu, Ivana Fleischer, Ralf Jackstell, Matthias Beller

Nature Communications, 5, Article number: 3091 doi:10.1038/ncomms4091