A new protocol for the generation of carbon monoxide by the dehydration of glyoxylic acid has been developed. Glyoxylic acid was applied as an environmentally friendly and cheap substitute for toxic and gaseous CO in the palladium-catalyzed carbonylation reactions providing industrially interesting products in good to excellent yields.Carbon monoxide as an important chemical substance has found an application in many organic reactions. Especially, the transition-metal-catalyzed transformations [1] represent an elegant method for the efficient instalment of a carbonyl group into organic molecules providing various carboxylic acid derivatives, ketones and aldehydes, which are of relevant interest in the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industry. [2] However, the high toxicity of CO gas and the associated need for special handling considerably disadvantages the use of carbonylation strategies in laboratory and industrial environment. Such safety considerations has resulted in an increased demand for the development of new and laboratory-safer sources of CO. [3] To this date, many CO-surrogates have been explored for the application in "CO-free" carbonylation. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] These suppliers include metal carbonyls such as [Mo(CO) 6 ], [4a-c] [Cr(CO) 6 ], [4d] [W(CO) 5 ], [4d-f] [Fe(CO) 5 ], [4g, h] acid chlorides [5] (COgen,[5a, b] pivaloyl chloride [5a] ), silacarboxylic acid, [6] formates, [7] formamides, [8] formaldehyde, [9] chloroform [10] and oxalyl chloride. [11] Generally, all these CO substitutes have been successfully applied in carbonylation reactions generating CO gas in situ or ex situ by using a two chamber reaction system. [5, 11] In terms of reaction efficiency and the avoidance of waste generation, a procedure for Heck, Songashira and radical carbonylation deserves a special attention. In method described by Ryu et al., [12] the carbon monoxide was generated ex situ by the Morgan reaction (dehydration of common and cheap formic acid with sulfuric acid). Recently, we have reported a reaction system for carbonylation of aryl halides using CO generated ex situ by Zn-mediated reduction of oxalyl chloride. [11c] A substoichiometric amount of CO-surrogate was sufficient for effective Pd-catalyzed carbonylative cou-plings. In our continuing effort to develop new carbonylation processes, [4g, h, 11c] we herein report a novel protocol for generation of CO gas and its direct application in palladium-catalyzed carbonylations. Two moles of carbon monoxide are generated in an efficient manner by dehydration of glyoxylic acid monohydrate using sulfuric acid.In 1907 H. D. Dakin [13] published a study describing the act of formaldehyde, glyoxylic acid and oxidizing substances on tryptophan and skatol (Hopkin-Cole test). He proposed a formation of glyoxylic acid by the oxidation of intermediary formed glycolaldehyde (Scheme 1, eq. 1). Despite the fact, that the formation of glyoxylic acid has not been satisfactory demonstrated, author suggested its theoretical decomposition to CO 2 , ...