Patent ID: 7709632

Claim:
A process for manufacturing at least one macrocyclic compound, comprising the steps of: (a) providing a reaction system comprising one or more reactants in a reaction medium, wherein the reactants participate in both cyclization and oligomerization reactions, and wherein cyclization is desired and oligomerization is undesired, and (b) modulating oligomerization reactions in the reaction medium, so as to reduce formation of the undesired oligomers by said one or more reactants, relative to corresponding unmodulated oligomerization reactions, wherein modulation of the oligomerization reactions to reduce formation of the undesired oligomers comprises adding one or more oligomerization control additives into the reaction medium, the oligomerization control additives comprise one or more extraneous oligomerization byproducts, and the macrocycle is a macrocycle with a range of from 3 to about 100 atoms, prepared by cyclization of a linear precursor, using one or more reaction steps that produce byproducts, and the reaction steps are selected from the group consisting of condensation reactions, oligomerization reactions, cyclization reaction(s), substitution reaction(s), and metathesis reaction(s).