N-Formylation of Carbon Dioxide and Amines with EDTA as a Recyclable Catalyst under Ambient Conditions

The reduction of CO2 is an important method to produce chemicals such as methanol, formic acid, formaldehyde, etc. In general, the reduction of CO2 is carried out at high temperatures and pressures with precious metals as catalysts, which is not favorable for industrial procedures. Thus, it will be very useful if researchers can find cost-effective catalysts for industrial application in CO2 reduction. In this work, commercially available ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) was tested as a cheap, non-toxic, and recyclable catalyst to initiate the N-carbonylation reaction of CO2 with amines. After screening various reaction parameters, including temperature, pressure, time, solvent, and reducing agent, the optimal reaction conditions were obtained: 80 °C, 2 MPa, 6 h, 50 mmol% catalyst dosage, 1 mL DMSO, and 1:1 molar ratio of amine to reducing agent. Notably, further studies confirmed that EDTA could also be effective for N-formylation even under ambient conditions (0.1 MPa and room temperature). The suitability of the catalyst for 26 kinds of substrates (including aliphatic amines, aromatic amines, and alicyclic amines) and its reusability were also investigated, with satisfactory results. Scale-up research has been performed effectively with a high conversion of amine (83%) to obtain the mono-formylated product selectively. Finally, the mechanism of the reaction between amine and CO2 has been proposed via control experiments and compared with results in the literature.