Abstract

The effect of the addition of triphenylphosphine sulfide, thiophene, benzo[b]thiophene and dibenzo[b,d]thiophene on the hydroformylation of 1-hexene catalyzed by rhodium complexes RhH(CO)(4), RhH(CO)(2)(PPh3)(2) and RhH(CO)(2)(diphos) was studied. The addition of these sulfur compounds did not affect the activity of non modified rhodium precatalysts, decreased the activity of the PPh3-modified one and increased the activity of the diphos-modified ones, which is indicative of the sulfur tolerance of these precatalysts. The linear to branched ratio (l/b) varied from 0.5 to 3.4 for the non-modified precatalyst, and from 1.7 to 3.3 for the phosphine-modified ones.