Silver tubular complexes

Carbon-based nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted a great deal of attention in the fields of chemistry, physics, and materials science and have been extensively studied since their initial discovery in 1991.36 Much of the excitement in this area of research stems from their unique structures, fundamental electronic and physical properties, and potential applications.37 Inspired by these carbon nanotube studies, coordination chemists have undertaken significant efforts toward the construction of tube-like complexes through metal-ligand coordination.38 1 Examples of silver(I) tubular complexes obtained via assembly reactions of predesigned organic ligands with silver salts are described here.42-44... 

In spite of the numerous publications showing the potential of such periodic operations especially in the field of complex reactions, experimental studies are virtually non-existent. Of the few experimental works, Renken et al. ( ) compared the performance of a tubular reactor in which a single reaction, the hydrogenation of ethylene, took place, under periodic operation and at steady-state. He reported an improvement of 60% in conversion. In another publication, Renken et al. (3) showed experimentally that periodic operation can be used to eliminate the temperature problems associated with highly exothermic reactions, e.g. the oxidation of ethylene over a silver catalyst. In other experimental work Unni et al. W) showed that periodic variation of reactant composition improved the rate of oxidation of SO2 over a vanadium oxide by as much as 30%. Denis and Kabel ( 5) studied the cyclic operation of a heterogeneous reactor for the vapour phase dehydration of ethanol and observed that adsorption/desorption played a predominant role in the transients of the system. 

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