Use of soluble metal salts in metathesis reactions

Abstract

The present invention describes the use of soluble metal salts to reduce impurities and metathesis catalysts poisons from olefinic feedstocks to improve olefin metathesis efficiency. The soluble metal salts were added to the olefinic feedstocks to prevent peroxides and catalyst poisons from inhibiting the metathesis catalyst. The soluble metal salts remain in the olefinic feedstocks and are used without further purification in the olefin metathesis reactions. The key to this invention is the soluble metal salt compounds do not inhibit the olefin metathesis catalysts but unexpectedly increase olefin metathesis catalyst efficiency while prior art heterogeneous metal complexes sequester the olefin metathesis catalyst, preventing olefin metathesis.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.