BACKGROUND Transesterification catalyzed by solid base catalyst is a brilliant technology for the noble process featuring the fast reaction under mild reacting condition in biodiesel production. Heterogeneous base catalysts are generally more reactive than solid acid catalysts which require extreme operating condition for high conversion and biodiesel yield. In the present study, synthesis of b...

Vanillin is one of the most commonly used natural products, which can also be produced from lignin-derived feedstocks. The chemical synthesis of vanillin is well-established in large-scale production from petrochemical-based starting materials. To overcome this problem, lignin-derived monomers (such as eugenol, isoeugenol, ferulic acid etc.) have been effectively used in the past few years. How...

Spent catalysts are principally solid waste which that coming out from nitrogenous fertilizer industry, during the production of ammonia, resulting in the production of large amount of solid waste containing nickel, which is the spent or deactivated catalysts. These catalysts contain from 12-14% nickel based on the production process in fertilizer industry disposal of spent catalyst is a proble...

Purely catalytic P systems can generate all recursively enumerable sets of natural numbers with only three catalysts in one membrane, whereas we know that one catalyst in one membrane is not enough. On the other hand, P systems also allowing (non-catalytic) non-cooperative evolution rules with only two catalysts in one membrane are already computationally complete, too. We here investigate spec...

The rational design of artificial enzymes, either by applying physico-chemical intuition of protein structure and function or with the aid of computational methods, is a promising area of research with the potential to tremendously impact medicine, industrial chemistry and energy production. Designed proteins also provide a powerful platform for dissecting enzyme mechanisms of natural systems. ...

supported catalysts synthesized via the interaction of mg(oet)2 with ticl4 in the presence or absence of an internal stereoregulating donor (di-n-butyl phthalate), with different solvents (chlorobenzene, n-undecane, n-heptane) at different titanation temperatures have been studied by a set of physicochemical methods. data on the chemical composition, x-ray structure and pore structure of these ...

Palladium-catalyzed amination reactions of aryl halides have undergone rapid development in the last 12 years, largely driven by the implementation of new classes of ligands. Biaryl phosphanes have proven to provide especially active catalysts in this context. This Review discusses the application of these catalysts in C-N cross-coupling reactions in the synthesis of heterocycles and pharmaceut...

Research projects of the Department of Chemistry, University of Basel are reviewed ranging from the synthesis of complex natural products to the development of metalorganic catalysts and organocatalysts.

New chiral bifunctional thiourea-phosphonium salts have been developed based on natural amino acids as highly efficient phase-transfer catalysts in the enantioselective aza-Henry reaction.