Overview of alkane oxidation

Oxidation of organic compounds by ruthenium tetraoxide has been reviewed. The oxidation of various types of organic compounds such as alkanes, alkenes, allenes, aromatic rings, alcohols, amines, and sulfides has been discussed The cyclic oxoruthe-nium(VI) diesters that are formed in the initial step of the oxidation of alkenes are considered to be intermediates in the formation of 1,2-diols.70 The development of new and selective oxidative transformations under ruthenium tetroxide catalysis during the past 10 years has been reviewed. The state of research in this field is summarized and a systematic overview of the reactivity and the reaction mode of ruthenium tetroxide is given.71... 

Functionalization of alkanes to produce fine chemicals uses many different reaction types that cannot be listed completely within this introduction. An overview of typical reactions, for example halogenation, dehydration, borylation, oxidation, and hydroxyalkylation, is given in Table 6. 

The development of noble metal catalysts and transition metal oxides for catalytic oxidation of VOCs has been widely reported in the literature. " The review paper published in 1987 by Spivey presents a good overview of catalytic combustion of VOCs. More recent reviews, focusing on the catalytic combustion of a wide range of VOCs by a wide variety of catalysts and on chlorinated VOCs, were published in 2004. In the last two years, two more reviews have been published. These reviews focused on the development of non-noble metal oxide catalysts for catalytic combustion of VOCs and on catalytic combustion catalysts for the removal of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. This review is not intended to be an exhaustive account, but should provide an overview of the current state of research for catalysts used for alkane and aromatic total oxidation. The aim is also to identify the types of catalysts that are likely to be of use in the future, and the obstacles that must be overcome to produce viable catalysts. The development of a catalyst that may be used for the combustion of all classes of compounds under the general term VOC presents a major challenge for future research, as this has not yet been achieved. 

It must be noted, however, that efforts have been spent by several research groups with the aim of combining the favourable features of monolithic catalysts operated under autothermal conditions (thus favouring the onset in the gas-phase volumes of selective oxidation paths of the alkane fuel), with the development of intrinsically active and selective formulations able to contribute directly or indirectly to the selective production of olefins. A specific mention is deserved by rare earth oxides-based catalysts wherein contributions of the catalyst surface to the formation of ethyl species were reported. " Interestingly, through a detailed comparison of the observed performances of Pt-based and LaMnOs-based monoliths in ethane ODH experiments, Donsi et observed that the use of the perovskite-coated monolith yielded an improvement in ethylene yield. An overview of their results is reported in Fig. 28.6. 

---