Homogeneous Catalysis in Ionic Liquids

Giernoth R (2007) Homogeneous catalysis in ionic liquids. Top Curr Chem 276 1-23... 

In 1999 Blanchard et al. reported a good solubility of carbon dioxide in l-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate at high pressures, while the ionic liquid did not dissolve in carbon dioxide. Therefore, supercritical carbon dioxide is suited to extract organic solutes from ionic liquids, and also continuous flow homogeneous catalysis in ionic liquids carbon dioxide systems is possible. First spectroscopic studies show that the anion dominates the interactions with carbon dioxide by Lewis acid-base interactions. However, the strength of carbon dioxide anion interactions did not correlate with carbon dioxide solubility. Thus, strong anion-carbon dioxide interactions were excluded as major cause for the carbon dioxide solubility in ionic liquids. Instead, a correlation of carbon dioxide solubility and the ionic liquid molar volume was observed. Additionally, a significant volume decrease of dissolved carbon dioxide was... 

However, research into transition metal catalysis in ionic liquids should not focus only on the question of how to make some specific products more economical or ecological by use of a new solvent and, presumably, a new multiphasic process. Since it bridges the gap between homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, in a novel and highly attractive manner, the application of ionic liquids in transition metal catalysis gives access to some much more fundamental and conceptual questions for basic research. 

In comparison with traditional biphasic catalysis using water, fluorous phases, or polar organic solvents, transition metal catalysis in ionic liquids represents a new and advanced way to combine the specific advantages of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis. In many applications, the use of a defined transition metal complex immobilized on a ionic liquid support has already shown its unique potential. Many more successful examples - mainly in fine chemical synthesis - can be expected in the future as our loiowledge of ionic liquids and their interactions with transition metal complexes increases. 

In comparison to traditional biphasic catalysis using water, fluorous phases or polar organic solvents, transition metal catalysis in ionic liquids represents a new and advanced way of combining the specific advantages of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis. 

Catalysis in ionic liquids is not limited to biphasic reaction systems. When the reaction mixture is homogeneous, an extraction solvent that is immiscible with the ionic liquid can be used to remove the product. A number of organic solvents display little or only limited miscibility with these liquids. However, this advantage is of limited value in practice, because one major incentive for using ionic liquids is to avoid volatile organic compounds. 

Earlier in this section we stated that in many respects transition metal catalysis in ionic liquids is better regarded as heterogeneous catalysis on a liquid support than as conventional homogeneous catalysis in an alternative solvent. As in heterogeneous catalysis, support-ionic liquids and can lead to catalyst activation (see Section 5.3.1.2 for more details). Product separation from an ionic catalyst layer is often easy (at least if the products are not too polar and have a significant vapor pressure) as in dassical heterogeneous catalysis. However, mass transfer limitation problems (when the chemical kinetics... 

Many transition metal complexes dissolve readily in ionic liquids, which enables their use as solvents for transition metal catalysis. Sufficient solubility for a wide range of catalyst complexes is an obvious, but not trivial, prerequisite for a versatile solvent for homogenous catalysis. Some of the other approaches to the replacement of traditional volatile organic solvents by greener alternatives in transition metal catalysis, namely the use of supercritical CO2 or perfluorinated solvents, very often suffer from low catalyst solubility. This limitation is usually overcome by use of special ligand systems, which have to be synthesized prior to the catalytic reaction. 

Since no special ligand design is usually required to dissolve transition metal complexes in ionic liquids, the application of ionic ligands can be an extremely useful tool with which to immobilize the catalyst in the ionic medium. In applications in which the ionic catalyst layer is intensively extracted with a non-miscible solvent (i.e., under the conditions of biphasic catalysis or during product recovery by extraction) it is important to ensure that the amount of catalyst washed from the ionic liquid is extremely low. Full immobilization of the (often quite expensive) transition metal catalyst, combined with the possibility of recycling it, is usually a crucial criterion for the large-scale use of homogeneous catalysis (for more details see Section 5.3.5). 

The range of ligands developed for ionic liquid catalysis is much smaller than that for other immobilization solvents such as water and fluorous phases as off the shelf ligands and catalysts can often be used in ionic liquids. For example, a number of catalysts that were developed to operate in organic solvents under homogeneous conditions are salts themselves and do not need to be modified for use in ionic liquids [25],... 

Another example is butene dimerization catalyzed by nickel complexes in acidic chloroaluminates 14). This reaction has been performed on a continuous basis on the pilot scale by IFF (Difasol process). Relative to the industrial process involving homogeneous catalysis (Dimersol process), the overall yield in dimers is increased. Similarly, selective hydrogenation of diene can be performed in ionic liquids, because the solubility of dienes is higher than that of monoene, which is higher than that of paraffins. In the case of the Difasol process, a reduction of the volume of the reaction section by a factor of up to 40 can be achieved. This new Difasol technology enables lower dimer (e.g., octenes) production costs 14). 

It is mostly complexes of ruthenium and rhodium that have been used to conduct hydrogenation reactions in ionic liquids and little attention has so far been paid to modifying the employed catalysts to improve their performance in the ionic environment. The majority of the catalysts used are identical to those employed in conventional homogeneous catalysis conducted in molecular solvents like, for example, RhCl(PPh3)3 and RuCl2(PPh3)3. 

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