Industrial application of catalysis

Over the past three decades catalytic reforming has evolved very rapidly. It is now one of the most important industrial applications of catalysis. The reforming process was originally developed to produce gasoline components of high antiknock quality to meet the fuel requirements of high compression ratio automobile engines. 

In view of the tremendous growth in the industrial application of catalysis in the last decade and the ever-increasing scientific activity in this field it was thought that such a congress would be most welcome to all interested workers. No international meeting on catalysis has ever been held in the United States of America, and the last international discussion on this subject took place in 1950 in Liverpool under the sponsorship of the Faraday Society. 

Bond, G. C. (1987). Heterogeneous Catalysis Principles and Applications, Clarendon Press, Oxford. An excellent introductory book that described numeroias industrial applications of catalysis. 

Although there were considerable advances in the industrial application of catalysis prior to 1990, technological advances generally did not evolve from systematic, fundamental investigations (3), Various interpretations of catalytic phenomena at the surface impeded the progress of understanding the fundamental principles involved. 

In contrast to heterogeneous catalysis, industrial applications of homogeneous catalysis are relatively scarce, largely being restricted to the speciality and pharmaceutical sectors. Homogeneous catalysts have been well researched, since their catalytic centres can be relatively easily... 

K. Tanabe and WF. Holderich, Industrial Applications of Solid Acid-Base Catalysts , Applied Catalysis A, General, 1999, 181, 399. 

Schneider, M., Zimmermann, K., Aquino, F., Bonrath, W. (2001) Industrial Application of Nafion-Systems in Rearrangement - Aromatisation, Transesterification, Alkylation, and Ring-Closure Reactions. Applied Catalysis A-General, 220, 51-58. 

Table 3.12 surveys current industrial applications of enantioselective homogeneous catalysis in fine chemicals production. Most chiral catalyst in Table 3.12 have chiral phosphine ligands (see Fig. 3.54). The DIP AMP ligand, which is used in the production of L-Dopa, one of the first chiral syntheses, possesses phosphorus chirality, (see also Section 4.5.8.1) A number of commercial processes use the BINAP ligand, which has axial chirality. The PNNP ligand, on the other hand, has its chirality centred on the a-phenethyl groups two atoms removed from the phosphorus atoms, which bind to the rhodium ion. Nevertheless, good enantio.selectivity is obtained with this catalyst in the synthesis of L-phenylalanine. 

Bunimovich, G. A., Strots, V. O., and Goldman, O. V., Theory and industrial application of S02 oxidation reverse-process for sulphuric acid production, in Unsteady-state Processes in Catalysis (Matros, Yu. Sh., Ed.). VNU Science Press, Utrecht, 1990, pp. 7-24. 

Montmorillonite is a laminar and expandable clay with wet binding properties and widely available throughout the world. The layers have permanent negative charges due to isomorphic substitutions. The scientific interest of montmorillonite lies in its physical and chemical properties as well as its low price. Consequently, the industrial application of montmorillonite is an attractive process [1]. On the other hand, among numerous reports published so far, crystallization of zeolite Beta draws much attention because of its unique characteristics, in particular, acidity and acid catalysis. It is reasonable to conceive that a catalyst system based on Beta/montmorillonite composite with suitable composition should provide a good catalytic capacity. 

This achievement was unique in two respects 1) it was the first example of industrial application of a homogeneous enantioselective catalysis methodology and 2) it represented a rare example of very quick convergence of basic knowledge into commercial application. The monophosphine ligand CAMP was shortly replaced by the related diphosphine ligand DIPAMP which improved the selectivity for the I-DOPA system up to 95% ee [45]. 

A. F. Noels, A.J. Hubert. In A. Mon-treux, F. Petit (Eds.), Industrial Applications of Homogeneous Catalysis. Riedel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1988. 

The cost of the catalysts represents a major hurdle on the road to the industrial application of homogeneous catalysis, and in particular for the production of fine chemicals [1, 2], This is particularly true for chiral catalysts that are based on expensive metals, such as rhodium, iridium, ruthenium and palladium, and on chiral ligands that are prepared by lengthy total syntheses, which often makes them more expensive than the metals. In spite of this, the number of large-scale applications for these catalysts is growing. Clearly, these can only be economic if the substrate catalyst ratio (SCR) can be very high, often between 103 and 105. 

Organic-aqueous media offer important advantages for the industrial applications of enzymatic and whole-cell catalysis when substrates are poorly soluble in water [15-17], This is the case for most of the flavour compounds like terpenes [18, 19], Use of an organic phase in the aqueous reaction system has become a current way to improve biotransformation processes. Some of them are described next. 

SCHEME 5. Industrial applications of homogeneous asymmetric catalysis. 

The current or potential industrial applications of microemulsions indude metal working, catalysis, advanced ceramics processing, production of nanostructured materials (see Nanotechnology), dyeing, agrochemicals, cosmetics, foods, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology (9,12—18). Environmental and human-safety aspects of surfactants have begun to receive considerable attention (19—21). 

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