Wacker process

The Wacker process is an industrial catalytic reaction that oxidizes ethylene to acetaldehyde using palladium and copper salts in aqueous solution.

Wacker oxidation: An aqueous palladium-catalyzed oxidation of alkenes, typically using a copper salt and oxygen as the terminal oxidant. The industrial process is the best-known application of this broader alkene-oxidation reaction.
Ethylene: A two-carbon alkene and major petrochemical feedstock with formula C₂H₄. It is the carbon feedstock oxidized in the Wacker process.
Walter Reppe: A German chemist known for developing industrial methods based on acetylene chemistry and high-pressure reactions. Reppe’s acetylene-based route provided an important industrial alternative before Wacker adoption.
Acetaldehyde production: The industrial manufacture of acetaldehyde by routes including ethylene oxidation and ethanol dehydrogenation. The Wacker process became a major direct route to this commodity chemical.
Petrochemical industry: The industrial sector that converts petroleum and natural-gas feedstocks into chemicals and materials. The process made acetaldehyde production depend on ethylene from petrochemical cracking.
Palladium(II) chloride: A palladium salt that serves as the alkene-binding and oxidizing catalyst in the Wacker reaction. It coordinates ethylene and is reduced to palladium metal during product formation.
Alkene: An unsaturated hydrocarbon containing at least one carbon–carbon double bond. Ethylene belongs to this family of substrates for palladium-catalyzed oxidation.
Otto Roelen: A German chemist who discovered the hydroformylation reaction while researching cobalt-catalyzed carbonylation. His work exemplifies the contemporary search for catalytic routes from olefins to carbonyl compounds.
Acetic acid: A two-carbon carboxylic acid used in chemical manufacture and present in vinegar. Acetaldehyde can be oxidized further to acetic acid.
Ethylene steam cracking: A high-temperature process that converts hydrocarbons into ethylene and other light olefins. Steam cracking supplies the ethylene feedstock that made the process commercially practical.

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