Potential of Homogeneous Pd Catalyst Separation by Ceramic Membranes. Application to Downstream and Continuous Flow Processes

Successful chemical production of molecules while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact of the process relies not only on more efficient reactions but also on developments in reactor and separation technology. Recent decades have also witnessed a significant growth in industrial interest in solvent-based separations using membranes stable to organic solvents. The incorporation of membranes into a chemical process can be via a simple downstream processing method or an integrated reaction membrane method. This paper deals with homogeneous organometallic catalyzed reactions and probes the separation of a number of readily available palladium complexes from reaction mixtures with highly stable ceramic membranes. A number of different processing methods, namely, online, at-line, and off-line are compared and contrasted. A high rejection of Palladium species and consequently very low palladium contamination of reaction products with a single organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) step has been demonstrated.