Homogeneous copper-catalyzed aerobic oxidation

Stahl et al. reported a continuous homogeneous copper-catalyzed aerobic oxidation method for primary alcohols [32]. A modified tube reactor was used (Figure 23.3). A dilute oxygen source (9% O2 in Nj) was controlled by a mass flow controller and mixed with the substrate and catalyst solution, respectively, by... 

The Wacker process (Eq. 1) was developed nearly 50 years ago [1-3] and represents one of the most successful examples of homogeneous catalysis in industry [4-9]. This palladium-catalyzed method for the oxidation of ethylene to acetaldehyde in aqueous solution employs a copper cocatalyst to facilitate aerobic oxidation of Pd° (Scheme 1). Despite the success of this process, certain features of the reaction have Umited the development of related aerobic oxidation reactions. Many organic molecules are only sparingly sol-... 

Early reports of Cu-catalyzed aerobic alcohol oxidation focused on simple homogeneous complexes [11] with nitrogenous ligands, such as 2,2 -bipyridine and 1,10-phenanthroline. However, copper-catalyzed methods that include nitroxyl radical or azodicarboxylate cocatalysts exhibit significant synthetic advantages and have been widely investigated in the literature (Figure 6.1). 

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