Patent ID: 9272975
Filing Date: 2016-03-01
CPC Classification: B01D,C07C

Claim Text:
1. A continuous process for the oxidative cleavage of derivatives of unsaturated carboxylic acids for the production of saturated carboxylic acids, which comprises the steps of: a) feeding to a first continuous reactor at least a derivative of an unsaturated carboxylic acid, an oxidizing compound and a catalyst capable of catalyzing the oxidation reaction of the olefinic double bond to obtain an intermediate compound containing vicinal diols; b) feeding to a second continuous reactor said intermediate compound, a compound containing oxygen and an aqueous phase comprising a catalyst capable of catalyzing the oxidation reaction of the vicinal diols to carboxylic groups, to obtain saturated monocarboxylic acids (i) and derivatives of saturated carboxylic acids with more than one acid function (ii), the output of this second continuous reactor comprising an aqueous phase and an organic phase; b′) separating the aqueous phase from the organic phase of the product obtained as output from step b); c) transferring the organic phase of the product of step b) to an apparatus suitable to separate the saturated monocarboxylic acids (i) from the derivatives of carboxylic acids having more than one acid function (ii); and wherein in said steps a) and b the operations to feed reagents and to remove products take place simultaneously for the entire duration of the process, and in each of said step the process conditions remain substantially unchanged.