Hydroformylation of recalcitrating biorenewable compounds containing trisubstituted double bonds

Abstract Hydroformylation is a useful tool in industrial organic syntheses and it is easily applied to substrates containing terminal C-C double bonds. Applying this reaction to substrates containing other functionalities or trisubstituted C-C double bonds is not straightforward. Herein, the hydroformylation of several biorenewable alkenes with these features, namely: α-terpineol, terpinen-4-ol, limonene (double hydroformylation), and α-ionone, is presented. Only by the judicious choice of the catalytic system and reaction conditions, was it possible to obtain good yields and selectivity for these substrates.