Heterogeneous catalysis plays a key role in the manufacture of essential products in key areas of agriculture and pharmaceuticals, but also in the production of polymers and numerous essential materials. Our understanding of heterogeneous catalysts is advancing rapidly, especially by using the latest characterisation methods on these relatively complex effect materials. At the heart of these ca...

The catalytic reduction of carboxylic acid derivatives has witnessed a rapid development in recent years. These reactions, involving molecular hydrogen as the reducing agent, can be promoted by heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysts. The milestone achievements and recent results by both approaches are discussed in this Review. In particular, we focus on the mechanistic aspects of the catalytic...

The catalytic partial hydrogenation of substituted alkynes to alkenes is a process of high importance in the manufacture of several market chemicals. The present paper shortly reviews the heterogeneous catalytic systems engineered for this reaction under continuous flow and in the liquid phase. The main contributions appeared in the literature from 1997 up to August 2016 are discussed in terms ...

We have demonstrated that a combination of enantiopure 2-diarylmethylpyrrolidines and heterogeneous Pd/BaSO(4) is an efficient catalytic system for the asymmetric hydrogenation of citral, specifically, a mixture of E-citral and Z-citral in any ratio, and that citronellal is obtained with high enantioselectivity. This dual catalyst system provides a new and more economical route to L-menthol.

Optically active (−)-ephedrine, (−)-norephedrine, and (−)-prolinol were immobilized onto cubic mesoporousMCM-48 silica.The immobilized amino alcohols served as a heterogeneous chiral catalyst for the asymmetric addition of diethylzinc to aldehydes and transfer hydrogenation to ketones. The developed catalytic process yielded optically enriches secondary aromatic alcohols with 92–99% conversion ...

A new heterogeneous catalytic transfer hydrogenation (CTH) system, consisting of a non-flammable supported Au catalyst along with 2-propanol as the hydrogen donor, was proven to be effective for chemoselective reduction of a wide range of aromatic ketones and aldehydes to the corresponding alcohols.

Chiral catalysis is of great industrial interest for the production of enantiomerically pure compounds. Although many homogeneous chiral catalysts have been developed, the difficulty of the product purification and catalyst recycle is one of the obstacles of the practical applications. The design and synthesis of efficient and recyclable heterogeneous chiral catalysts remain the challenges and ...

Several hydrogenation reactions involving O-debenzylations, aromatic nitro group reductions and reductive dethionations were investigated under continuous flow conditions in a novel, laboratory scale hydrogenation device that combines endogeneous hydrogen generation and heterogeneous Pd/C or Raney-Ni catalyst cartridges. The hydrogenation of organic compounds through addition and/or hydrogenoly...

Catalytic hydrogenation of aromatic compounds is an important reaction which is useful for making key intermediates in organic chemistry and for the production of aromaticcontent-free fuels. More recently, there has been much interest in the potential for storage of molecular hydrogen, as an energy source, by catalytic hydrogenation of carboneous materials (e.g., fullerene and carbon nanotubes)...