Hydrogen catalysis

Aldehydes and ketones are similar in their response to hydrogenation catalysis, and an ordering of catalyst activities usually applies to both functions. But the difference between aliphatic and aromatic carbonyls is marked, and preferred catalysts differ. In hydrogenation of aliphatic carbonyls, hydrogenolysis seldom occurs, unless special structural features are present, but with aryl carbonyls either reduction to the alcohol or loss of the hydroxy group can be achieved at will. 

With some transition-metal complexes, the ligand is not only an ancillary ligand. Similar to the transition-metal, it takes directly part in the hydrogen transfer process. Such ligand-metal bifunctional hydrogenation catalysis is dramatically changing the face of reduction chemistry (Scheme 9) (for reviews of ligand-metal bifunctional catalysis, see [32, 37 0]). 

Patsoura, A., Kondarides, D.I., and Verykios, X.E. (2007) Photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants with simultaneous production of hydrogen. Catalysis Today, 124 (3-4), 94-102. 

At least for ethylene hydrogenation, catalysis appears to be simpler over oxides than over metals. Even if we were to assume that Eqs. (1) and (2) told the whole story, this would be true. In these terms over oxides the hydrocarbon surface species in the addition of deuterium to ethylene would be limited to C2H4 and C2H4D, whereas over metals a multiplicity of species of the form CzH D and CsHs-jD, would be expected. Adsorption (18) and IR studies (19) reveal that even with ethylene alone, metals are complex. When a metal surface is exposed to ethylene, selfhydrogenation and dimerization occur. These are surface reactions, not catalysis in other words, the extent of these reactions is determined by the amount of surface available as a reactant. The over-all result is that a metal surface exposed to an olefin forms a variety of carbonaceous species of variable stoichiometry. The presence of this variety of relatively inert species confounds attempts to use physical techniques such as IR to char-... 

A large number of (mostly zero-valent) nickel-alkene complexes has been reported. Although these complexes have not been recently reviewed, their general properties and structures were expertly described in 1982 [21]. A complete overview of the reported nickel-alkene and nickel-alkyl complexes is beyond the scope of this section, in which a selection of nickel-alkene and nickel-alkyl complexes is described, mostly related to possible intermediates in hydrogenation catalysis. 

Larpent and coworkers were interested in biphasic liquid-liquid hydrogenation catalysis [61], and studied catalytic systems based on aqueous suspensions of metallic rhodium particles stabilized by highly water-soluble trisulfonated molecules as protective agent. These colloidal rhodium suspensions catalyzed octene hydrogenation in liquid-liquid medium with TOF values up to 78 h-1. Moreover, it has been established that high activity and possible recycling of the catalyst could be achieved by control of the interfacial tension. 

Fluorous Catalysts and Fluorous Phase Catalyst Separation for Hydrogenation Catalysis... 

Some of the improved fluorous arylsilylphosphines in the library 11 (a, b, x, pos) were tested in the context of hydrosilylation catalysis [24]. Rh and phosphine leaching were driven down further to non-detectable levels (<0.1%) and 0.8%, respectively, and it can be expected that even better results are possible for hydrogenation catalysis. 

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