Introduction and General Developments

Sustainable development, responsible care, and process-integrated protection of the environment are the guidelines of chemistry and the chemical industry in the new millennium. A high percentage of industrial processes are based on the catalytic transformation of substrates. The main focus of industrial research is the further development of transformation processes toward sustainability, and the use of renewable resources as substrates. 

The use of renewable resources as substrates in chemical processes has recently been reviewed [1]. There are two major topics of current research (1) oleochem-ical reactions, and (2) chemical transformation of carbohydrates. Nevertheless, the chemical possibilities of renewable resources as substrates - using homogeneous catalysis - are still very far from being fully exploited. 

Natural oils and fats comprise the greatest proportion of renewable resources as substrates, since they are produced easily from vegetables and animals. The range of possibilities was summarized in 1988 [2]. 

The main applications of chemical processes in the field of oleo chemistry involve oxidation and metathesis. Neither is yet involved in industrial processes, but their application moves realistically nearer as the interest in this topic increases. 

As mentioned above, fatty materials as educts for chemical processes are available from vegetables and animals in such purity that they can be used for further chemical conversion. 

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