Alkylaromatic compound production, for use as starting material for alkarylsulfonate surfactants, by alkylation of aromatic hydrocarbons with olefins using cascade of reactors to increase working life of catalyst

摘要

Production of alkylaromatic compounds (I), by reacting 3-30C olefins (II) (or alcohols forming (II) under the reaction conditions) with aromatic hydrocarbons (III) in presence of an alkylation catalyst (IV), is carried out in a cascade of at least two reactors each containing (IV), where at least 80 % of (III) is supplied to the first reactor of the cascade and at least 40 % of (II) is supplied after the first reactor. An independent claim is included for the preparation of alkylarylsulfonates (A), by: (1) converting a 4C olefin mixture over a metathesis catalyst to give an olefin mixture containing 2-pentene and/or 2-hexene; (2) catalytically dimerizing the 2-pentene and/or 2-hexene (optionally after isolation) to give a mixture containing 10-12C olefins, optionally separating the 10-12C olefins and separating 5-30 wt. % (based on the 10-12C olefins) of low-boiling components of the 10-12C olefins; (3) reacting the obtained 10-12C olefin mixture with (III) in presence of (IV) to give alkylaromatic compounds (I'), optionally with addition of 0-60 wt. % (based on the 10-12C olefin mixture) of linear olefins before the reaction; (4) sulfonating (I') and neutralizing to give (A), optionally with addition of 0-60 wt. % (based on (I')) of linear alkylbenzenes (provided that no mixing has been carried out in the previous step); and (5) optionally mixing the obtained (A) with optionally with addition of 0-60 wt. % (based on (A)) of linear aralkylsulfonates (provided that no mixing has been carried out either of the previous two steps); The novel feature being that the reaction in the alkylation stage (3) is carried out as for the present procedure for preparing (I).