Direct conversion of glyceric acid to succinic acid by reductive carbonylation

Abstract

Glyceric acid (GA), a glycerol derivative, can be used as a versatile platform molecule to produce value-added chemicals. Succinic acid (SA) is a very important bio-based molecule that acts as a fine chemical and is used in biodegradable polymer synthesis. It has been shown earlier that GA can be effectively converted to the platform chemical 3-iodopropionic acid (3-IPA) with a RhCl₃/HI catalyst system. In this work, we first explored the production of SA from 3-IPA by carbonylation. With RhCl₃ as the catalyst and acetic acid (AA) and water as the solvent, as high as 78% yield of SA can be achieved. Considering the similarity of the catalysts used in two steps, we then further probed the one-step synthesis of SA directly from GA. Under optimized reaction conditions, 71% yield of SA can be obtained directly from GA by reductive carbonylation with RhCl₃ and I₂ as the catalyst under H₂ and CO atmospheres. This is the first report of the direct conversion of GA to SA, which provides a novel method for glycerol valorization.