Production of lactic acid
AssigneeMonsanto Company
InventorHarold B. Tinker
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Lactic acid is synthesized by a process in which a vinyl ester is hydroformylated to an .alpha.-substituted propionaldehyde by reacting the vinyl ester with carbon monoxide and hydrogen in the presence of a hydroformylation catalyst and by further converting the .alpha.-substituted carbonyl intermediate via oxidation and hydrolysis to lactic acid. A preferred embodiment of the invention utilizes vinyl acetate as the feed.
Claims24
The process of preparing lactic acid which comprises hydroformylating a vinyl carboxylate with carbon monoxide and hydrogen in contact with a hydroformylation catalyst to prepare an alpha-acyloxypropionaldehyde, and oxidizing and hydrolyzing the intermediate to obtain lactic acid.
The process of preparing acids from vinyl acetate which comprises hydroformylating vinyl acetate by reaction with carbon monoxide and hydrogen in contact with a hydroformylation catalyst, oxidizing and hydrolyzing the reaction product mixture, and recovering lactic acid, propionic acid and acetic acid.
The process of preparing lactic acid which comprises reacting vinyl acetate with carbon monoxide and hydrogen in contact with a hydroformylation catalyst under hydroformylation conditions to produce alpha-acetoxypropionaldehyde in at least 70% yield based on the vinyl acetate, oxidizing and hydrolyzing to convert the alpha-acetoxypropionaldehyde to lactic acid.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.