Sustainable catalysis routes

There is, however, space for future development, particularly based on the synergic cooperation between catalysis, physicochemical characterization, and engineering groups. Hopefully, along with this contribution, a multitude of new catalytic and ecoefficient Friedel-Crafts acylation reactions will be investigated, providing the instruments to develop new sustainable synthetic routes to aromatic ketones. 

Unique reactivity and selectivity of guanidine catalysts in some reactions renders them important tools of organic chemists. In order to make this powerful tool more relevant to green chemistry, improvement on existing synthesis routes with a focus on greener solvents and less waste generation, and development of useful enantioselective reactions with sustainable catalysis in mind are two possible areas for future development. 

The examples shown here are industrial examples of the advantages brought about by catalysis to exploit more sustainable processes. These examples represents a real breakthrough in chemical processes, with a more than 100-fold reduction of effluents compared to the previous processes. The drastic simplification of the process (four less steps) allows a very competitive route. It is a nice example of the role of catalysis as a key for sustainability. 

Catalysis enhances the sustainability of today s world. Raw material utilization, energy efficiency, elimination of hazardous synthesis routes, pollution abatement and so on are a few examples of issues that are typically addressed by catalysis and, hence, contribute to safer, cleaner, more reliable, and more economical chemical processes (1). Catalyst development and improvement require an elaborate testing of candidate catalytic materials. Not only the physical properties, such as porosity, crystallinity, and surface composition are investigated but also and even more importantly, the functional properties such as the kinetics need to be determined. The observed kinetics is constituted by a sequence of different steps. When investigating a reaction mechanism in detail, operating conditions are selected at which the physical transport phenomena are not rate limiting. At such operating conditions, the observed kinetics are entirely determined by the chemical adsorption and reaction phenomena and, hence, they correspond to so-called intrinsic kinetics (2). 

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