PRODUCTION OF ALCOHOLS

摘要

A method of producing higher alcohols by the hydroformylation in an oxonation reactor of C4-C16 olefins in which the olefins are hydroformylated to produce an oxonation product primarily comprised of aldehydes, alcohols and formate esters. The product of oxonation is then hydrogenated to provide a product mixture comprising higher alcohols, a high boiling fraction and a low boiling fraction. The high boiling fraction and the low boiling fraction are subjected to distillation. The high boiling fraction (heavy oxo fraction) is subjected to cracking (HOF cracking) in which Irreversible products comprising ether-aldehydes and ether-alcohols are cracked to aldehydes and alcohols which are distilled overhead. The Reversible products comprising unsaturated and hydrogenated ethers which are not converted remain in the cracking reactor as bottoms product (U-HOF). Such (U-HOF) bottoms product comprises ether and ether-alcohol dimers and acetal trimers. The improvement in the method consists of the steps of (1) distilling the U-HOF bottoms product to recover the ether-alcohol dimers and (2) recirculating the ether-alcohol dimers to the oxonation reactor thereby converting the ether-alcohols to etheraldehydes.