Bifunctional reaction mechanism

The finding of the low-temperature activation of propane on zeolite Ga/HZSM-5 indicates a bifunctional reaction mechanism 179,181. The highly dispersed gallium oxide species in close vicinity to the Bronsted acid sites promote the initial activation of propane. Derouane et al. 179,181 further showed that hydrogen inhibits the activation of propane. This effect was explained by a competitive adsorption of hydrogen on the gallium species or even by a reduction of Ga to Ga species. 

Figure 2.45 Acid-base bifunctional reaction mechanism in the synthesis of cyclic carbonates over mixed oxides obtained from a Mg-Al hydrotalcite. Source Kaneda et al. [28].

Molecular heats of adsorption play a role in many catalytic reactions. Figure 6.23 illustrates this for an isomerization reaction catalyzed by a solid acid. As explained in Chapter 3, the hydroisomerization of alkanes on a zeolite-supported metal proceeds through a bifunctional reaction mechanism, in which the metal has the function of activating C-H bonds and H2 at a low reaction temperature. The alkane-alkene equilibrium is established by metal catalysis, and the alkene is protonated and isomerized by the acidic protons of the zeolite... 

Metal oxides possess multiple functional properties, such as acid-base, redox, electron transfer and transport, chemisorption by a and 71-bonding of hydrocarbons, O-insertion and H-abstract, etc. which make them very suitable in heterogeneous catalysis, particularly in allowing multistep transformations of hydrocarbons1-8 and other catalytic applications (NO, conversion, for example9,10). They are also widely used as supports for other active components (metal particles or other metal oxides), but it is known that they do not act often as a simple supports. Rather, they participate as co-catalysts in the reaction mechanism (in bifunctional catalysts, for example).11,12... 

One of the systems was found to be very efficient catalyzing enantioface-selective hydrogen transfer reactions to aromatic and in particular to aliphatic ketones with up to 95% ee. Regarding the latter reaction these are unprecedented ee values. The reaction mechanism of these transformations is best described as a metal-ligand bifunctional catalysis passing through a pericyclic-like transition state. 

Soualah, A., Lemberton, J.L., Pinard, L., Chater, M., Magnoux, P., and Moljord, K. (2008) Hydroisomerization of long-chain n-alkanes on bifunctional Pt/zeolite catalysts effect of the zeolite strucmre on the product selectivity and on the reaction mechanism. Appl. Catal. A., 336, 23-28. 

Industrial metal-zeolite catalysts undergo a bifunctional, monomolecular mechanism [1-5, 7]. Carbenium ions are the critical reaction intermediates to complete chain reactions. In the zeolite channels, carbenium ions likely exist as an absorbed alkoxyl species, rather than as free-moving charged ions [8], Figure 14.2 illustrates the accepted reaction mechanism, using hexanes as an example. 

AH of these experimental observations point to a remarkable hydrogen-bonding chemistry among the components of the catalytic reaction. In addition, MP2 calculations performed on model compounds allow the formulation of an ionic, outer sphere, bifunctional hydrogenation mechanism, as shown in Scheme 2.32. 

This may be explained by the bifunctional theory of electrocatalysis developed by Watanabe and Motoo [14], according to which Pt activates the dissociative chemisorption of methanol to CO, whereas Ru activates and dissociates water molecules, leading to adsorbed hydroxyl species, OH. A surface oxidation reaction between adsorbed CO and adsorbed OH becomes the rate-determining step. The reaction mechanism can be written as follows [15] ... 

Scheme 5 (a) Allylation of benzyl alcohols with a catalytic amount of BiCl3. (b) Proposed reaction mechanism including a bifunctional role of Bi(III)... 

In the present chapter, a classification of the hydrogenation reaction mechanisms according to the necessity (or not) of the coordination of the substrate to the catalyst is presented. These mechanisms are mainly classified between inner-sphere and outer-sphere mechanisms. In turns, the inner-sphere mechanisms can be divided in insertion and Meerweein-Ponndorf-Verley (MPV) mechanisms. Most of the hydrogenation reactions are classified within the insertion mechanism. The outer-sphere mechanisms are divided in bifunctional and ionic mechanisms. Their common characteristic is that the hydrogenation takes place by the addition of H+ and H- counterparts. The main difference is that for the former the transfer takes place simultaneously, whereas for the latter the hydrogen transfer is stepwise. 

Fig. 2.1 Simplified reaction mechanism for the aromatization of propane on HZSM-5 and bifunctional (Ga, Zn, Pt)/HZSM-5 catalysts...

The complexity of many heterogeneous systems used in multi-phase reactions, the use of a solid support, the difficulty in analyzing highly dispersed active sites and the bifunctional nature of many solid supported metal catalysts, make a detailed and complete study challenging. The simpler homogeneous systems teach many of the principles of catalysis active sites, reaction mechanisms, reaction kinetics and catalytic cycles, which can often be applied elsewhere. 

Figure 5.2 Reaction mechanism of hydrocarbon on bifunctional catalyst [5]. (Reproduced with permission from Elsevier)...

The good activity and the almost 100% selectivity to aromatics (mainly is benzene and toluene) have been obtained for the conversion of CH4 to aromatics over Mo(Vl) /HZSM-5 catalysts as reported previously [2-3]. CH4 activation under non-oxidizing conditions over bifunctional Mo(Vl)/HZSM-5 is initiated by CH3+ carbonium ion formation and the CH3+ further forms CH2 carbene active transients as proposed in [2, 3], The reaction mechanism suggested is as follows ... 

Figure S Reaction mechanism for MCP conversion and coke formation on bifunctional reforming catalysts.

This chapter presented the current stage of development in the desymmetrization of mt >o-com pounds and (dynamic) kinetic resolution of racemic compounds in which cinchona alkaloids or their derivatives are used as organocatalysts. As shown in many of the examples discussed above, cinchona alkaloids and their derivatives effectively promote these reactions by either a monofunctional base (or nucleophile) catalysis or a bifunctional activation mechanism. Especially, the cinchona-catalyzed alcoholytic desymmetrization of cyclic anhydrides has already reached the level of large-scale synthetic practicability and, thus, has already been successfully applied to the synthesis of key intermediates for a variety of industrially interesting biologically active compounds. However, for other reactions, there is still room for improvement... 

Reactions on the acidic surface Fig. 10. Bifunctional catalysis—reaction mechanisms. 

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