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CHAPTER 8
Gas-Phase Oxidation of
Alcohols: Innovation in
Industrial Technologies
and Recent Developments
JULIANA VELASQUEZ OCHOA AND FABRIZIO CAVANI*
Dipartimento di Chimica Industriale 'Toso Montanari', Universit` di
Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 4, 40136 Bologna, Italy
*Email: fabrizio.cavani@unibo.it
.
8.1 Introduction
The gas-phase oxidation of alcohols is a reaction of industrial relevance,
although nowadays the only commercially important application is the
production of formaldehyde, since other routes are preferred for the
synthesis of higher aldehydes or acids.
1,2
On the other hand, this class of
reactions has been the subject of investigation for many years, especially
during the 1980s and 1990s, mainly with regard to the gas-phase oxidation of
ethanol catalyzed by either single transition metal oxides or mixed oxides.
These studies aimed to discover which catalyst properties were needed in
order to address the reaction pathway either to the selective formation of
acetaldehyde, via oxidative dehydrogenation, or to the consecutive con-
version into acetic acid. Furthermore, aliphatic and aromatic alcohols show
a wide range of possible transformations, including (i) dehydration and
condensation to give olefins and dialkyl ethers, respectively, both catalyzed
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