Preparation of high-quality oxo process alcohols from inconstant raw material sources

Abstract

The preparation of high-quality oxo process alcohols from inconstant raw material sources is the technically demanding problem which is addressed by a process for continuously preparing an alcohol mixture, in which an input mixture which contains an olefin and has a composition that changes over time is subjected to an oligomerization to obtain an oligomerizate and at least a portion of the olefin oligomers present in the oligomerizate are hydroformylated with carbon monoxide and hydrogen in a hydroformylation in the presence of a homogeneous catalyst system to give aldehydes, at least some of which are converted to the alcohol mixture by subsequent hydrogenation. The process provides a constant plasticizer quality to be produced over a long production period and, optionally, a higher throughput with the same product quality. This is achieved a) by control of the temperature and/or the conversion of the oligomerization as a function of the current composition of the oligomerizate; and b) by control of the composition of the catalyst system and/or of the pressure of the hydroformylation as a function of the current composition of the aldehydes.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.