7. Some industrial aspects of the carbonylation reaction

Due to its toxicity, the handling of carbon monoxide requires specific industrial safety measures, and therefore cannot be envisaged in a standard multi-purpose workshop. What's more, carbonylation media are often extremely corrosive, and require the use of "noble" materials such as hastelloy HB2, titanium or zirconium, again necessitating the use of special facilities. Furthermore, the use of noble metals such as palladium and rhodium requires the industrial development of a catalyst recycling process to make the process economically attractive. Four main types of recycling have been studied and industrially developed (figure 6 ). The first and simplest consists in distilling the reaction products at the end of...