Cobalt metal hydrides

Common catalyst compositions contain oxides or ionic forms of platinum, nickel, copper, cobalt, or palladium which are often present as mixtures of more than one metal. Metal hydrides, such as lithium aluminum hydride [16853-85-3] or sodium borohydride [16940-66-2] can also be used to reduce aldehydes. Depending on additional functionahties that may be present in the aldehyde molecule, specialized reducing reagents such as trimethoxyalurninum hydride or alkylboranes (less reactive and more selective) may be used. Other less industrially significant reduction procedures such as the Clemmensen reduction or the modified Wolff-Kishner reduction exist as well. 

A critical issue is the stabiUty of the hydride electrode in the cell environment. A number of hydride formulations have been developed. Table 5 shows hydride materials that are now the focus of attention. Most of these are Misch metal hydrides containing additions of cobalt, aluminum, or manganese. The hydrides are prepared by making melts of the formulations and then grinding to fine powers. The electrodes are prepared by pasting and or pressing the powders into metal screens or felt. The additives are reported to retard the formation of passive oxide films on the hydrides. 

Calciothermic reduction of samarium oxide, in the presence of cobalt powder, yields samarium-cobalt alloys in the powder form. The process is popularly known as reduction diffusion. Samarium oxide, mixed with cobalt powder and calcium hydride powder or calcium particles, is heated at 1200 °C under 1 atm hydrogen pressure to produce the alloys. Cobalt oxide sometimes partly replaces the cobalt metal in the charge for alloy preparation. This presents no difficulty because calcium can easily reduce cobalt oxide. A pelletized mixture of oxides of samarium and cobalt, cobalt and calcium, with the components taken in stoichiometric quantities, is heated at 1100-1200 °C in vacuum for 2 to 3 h. This process is called coreduction. In reduction diffusion as well as in coreduction, the metals samarium and/or cobalt form by reduction rather quickly but they need time to form the alloy by diffusion, which warrants holding the charge at the reaction temperature for 4 to 5 h. The yield of alloy in these processes ranges from 97 to 99%. Reduction diffusion is the method by which most of the 500 to 600 t of the magnetic samarium-cobalt alloy (SmCOs) are produced every year. 

Tetraazamacrocyclic complexes131 of cobalt and nickel were found110 to be effective in facilitating the reduction of C02 at -1.3 to -1.6 V versus SCE (Table 8). An acetonitrile-water mixture and water were used as solvents, while in dry dimethylsulfoxide no catalytic reduction of C02 took place. Using an Hg electrode, both CO and H2 were produced, where total current efficiencies were greater than 90%. The turnover numbers of the catalysts were 2-9 h 1. The catalytic activity lasted for more than 24 h and the turnover numbers of the catalysts exceeded 100. A protic source was required to produce both CO and H2, and the authors suggested that both products may arise from a common intermediate, which is most likely a metal hydride. The applied potential for C02 reduction was further reduced by using illuminated p- Si in the presence of the above catalysts.111... 

Pettit and coworkers—metal hydride intermediates by weak base attack over Fe carbonyl catalysts. Pettit et al.ls approached the use of metal carbonyl catalysts for the homogeneous water-gas shift reaction from the standpoint of hydroformyla-tion by the Reppe modification.7 In the typical hydroformylation reaction, an alkene is converted to the next higher aldehyde or alcohol through reaction of CO and H2 with the use of a cobalt or rhodium carbonyl catalyst. However, in the Reppe modification, the reduction is carried out with CO and H20 in lieu of H2 (Scheme 6) ... 

In the reduction of dienes and polyenes, combinations of a metal hydride and transition metal halides can also be used. Sodium borohydride and cobalt(II) halides were applied in the selective reduction of unsaturated carbon-carbon double bonds93. LiAlH4, in the presence of Zrlv-, TiIV- or Vlv-halides, is a selective reducing agent of dienes94,95. The following reactions were carried out with sodium borohydride and iodine (equation 28)96. 

Metal derivatives of cobalt carbonyl hydride such as Tl[Co(CO)4], Zn[Co(CO)4]2, or Cd[Co(CO)4]2 are formed upon reaction of cobalt octacarbonyl with these metals in the presence of carbon monoxide under pressure. Reaction with halogens (X) produces cobalt carbonyl halides, Co(CO)X2. 

Metal Hydrides. Metal hydrides generally react readily with acetylenes, often by an insertion mechanism. Cobalt hydrocarbonyl gives complicated mixtures of compounds with acetylenes. The only products which have been identified so far are dicobalt hexacarbonyl acetylene complexes (34). Greenfield reports that, under conditions of the hydroformy lation reaction, acetylenes give only small yields of saturated monoaldehydes (30), probably formed by first hydrogenating the acetylene and then reacting with the olefin. Other workers have identified a variety of products from acetylene, carbon monoxide, and an alcohol with a cobalt catalyst, probably cobalt hydrocarbonyl. The major products observed were succinate esters (74,19) and succinate half ester acetals (19). 

Metal Hydrides. It is likely that the reduction of aldehydes to alcohols by cobalt hydrocarbonyl (27) is an example of a carbonyl insertion reaction with a metal hydride. It is not clear which way the hydrocarbonyl adds to the carbonyl groups —whether it forms a cobalt-carbon bond (2), or a cobalt-oxygen bond (90). 

Figure C shows carbon monoxide insertion reactions. There are a number of reduction reactions of carbon monoxide catalyzed by transition metals, and these, I believe, all involve an insertion of carbon monoxide into a metal hydride as an initial step. Cobalt hydrocarbonyl reacts with carbon monoxide to give formate derivatives. This is probably an insertion reaction also.

The steps by which this metal hydride forms the observed organic products are perhaps similar to those already discussed for cobalt catalysts. Steps which may be involved are intramolecular hydride migration to produce a formyl ligand ... 

The metal hydride mechanism was first described for the cobalt-carbonyl-catalyzed ester formation by analogy with hydroformylation.152 It was later adapted to carboxylation processes catalyzed by palladium136 153 154 and platinum complexes.137 As in the hydroformylation mechanism, the olefin inserts itself into the... 

T,he hydroformylation reaction or oxo synthesis has been used on an industrial scale for 30 years, and during this time it has developed into one of the most important homogeneously-catalyzed technical processes (I). A variety of technical processes have been developed to prepare the real catalyst cobalt tetracarbonyl hydride from its inactive precursors, e.g., a cobalt salt or metallic cobalt, to separate the dissolved cobalt carbonyl catalyst from the reaction products (decobaltation) and to recycle it to the oxo reactor. The efficiency of each step is of great economical importance to the total process. Therefore many patents and papers have been published concerning the problem of making the catalyst cycle as simple as possible. Another important problem in the oxo synthesis is the formation of undesired branched isomers. Many efforts have been made to keep the yield of these by-products at a minimum. 

Carbon monoxide has been found to be surprisingly reactive toward the metals in Group VIII, in both their oxidized and unoxidized states. A sizable number of compounds exist in which one or more CO molecules are attached to a metal atom through the carbon typical of these are nickel tetracarbonyl, Ni(CO)4, iron pentacarbonyl, Fe(CO) cobalt carbonyl hydride, Co(CO)4H platinum carbonyl chloride, Pt(CO)2Cl2 and more complicated molecules such as Co4(CO)i2. 

The cobalt complexes described here, together with the triethyl phosphite analog,6-8 are the only examples of simple cobalt phosphite hydride complexes reported to date and were the first examples of metal hydrides stabilized by phosphite ligands. 

General articles concerning transition metal hydrides,366 their crystallography,368 and on the preparation and properties of borohydride complexes369 are available. An overview on the use of HCo(CO)4 and related cobalt hydrides as catalysts in the hydroformylation of alkenes is available.367... 

The hydroformylation (or 0x0 ) reaction was discovered in 1938 by Roelen who was working on the formation of oxygenates as by-products of the Fischer-Tropsch reaction over cobalt catalysts. It soon became clear that the aldehydes and alcohols found were the products of secondary reactions undergone by the 1-alkenes (which are the primary products of the Fischer-Tropsch reaction, Section 4.7.2) with syngas. Further work showed that Roelen had discovered a new reaction, in which the elements of H and CHO were added to an olefin (hence hydroformylation), and which was catalyzed by cobalt. It was later found that the true precatalyst was not cobalt metal but derivatives of dicobalt octacarbonyl, such as the hydride, CoH(CO)4. 

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