Matthew Cude, Development Editor – Page 2 – Catalysis Science & Technology Blog

Author Archive

FineCat 2013 – Symposium on heterogeneous catalysis for fine chemicals

22 Oct 2012

Following the success of the 2012 edition, the 2013 FineCat Symposium will be held on April 2013 in the splendid conference venue of the Steri Palace, hall of Palermo’s University Rectorate. The meeting aims to provide an opportunity for contact between academic and industrial researchers, manufacturers and users of solid catalysts for the efficient and selective production of fine chemicals.

The following eminent scientists have confirmed their Symposium attendance as plenary lecturers in 2013:

Claudio Bianchini (CNR, Italy): Electrochemical Valorisation of Alcohols
D. Tyler McQuade (Florida State University): A Flow Chemistry Approach to Catalysis

Call for Papers and Abstract Submission
A call for Oral and Poster presentation is now open within one of the 2013 Symposium themes:

Green catalytic processes
Organo- and biocatalysis
Selective photocatalysis for organic chemistry
Asymmetric heterogeneous catalysis
Atom economy and clean technology
Green reaction media
Heterogeneous catalysis under flow conditions

For more details about the symposium, including how to submit your abstract and register to attend FineCat 2013, visit the website.

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RSC poster prizes awarded at Carbohydrate COST Meeting 2012

12 Oct 2012

Congratulations to Dirk Heyl (Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry), Richard Blackburn (Chemical Science) and Hilde van Hattum (Catalysis Science & Technology) who were the winners of the RSC poster prizes at the RSC Carbohydrate COST Meeting held at University of Birmingham on September 27^th-28^th:

Congratulations also go to Myriam Bergmann for winning the Buchanan Memorial Prize for best student talk, and to Professor David Bundle for being awarded the Haworth Medal.

Thank you to Professor Nigel Simpkins & Professor Rob Field for presenting the prizes, and to all those who participated for making this a success.

View more photos of the winners here

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Frontiers of Organometallic Chemistry (FOC-2012)

10 Oct 2012

Last month ‘Frontiers of Organometallic Chemistry’ was held in Saint Petersburg and saw researchers from around the world come together to talk about the latest developments in organometallic chemistry. Nobel laureate Professor Ei-ichi Negishi opened the conference with his talk ‘ZACA Reaction (Zr-Catalyzed Asymmetric Carboalumination of Alkenes) as an Emerging Tool for Asymmetric Synthesis of Feebly Chiral Compounds of High (>99%) Enantiomeric Purity’. The symposium continued with top quality talks by researchers from around the world, more details of the conference speakers can be found here.

Professor Vadim Yu Kukushkin, Saint-Petersburg State University, discussing the posters

The prize winners with Professor Kukushkin after the award ceremony

: G.A. Silantyev receiving a copy of ‘Organometallic Chemistry’ and a certificate, winning first prize

Catalysis Science & Tehcnology was very pleased to sponsor the poster prizes for this great international event, congratulations to the winners:

1^st Prize: G.A. Silantyev “Structural peculiarities of dibenzobarrelene-based PCP pincer iridium complexes”

2^nd Prize: W. Harnying “Zwitterionic-type molten salt: an efficient mild organocatalyst for synthesis of 2-aryl-5-methyl-2,3-dihydro-1h-3-pyrazolones by a four- component sequential reaction in water”

3^rd Prize: N.A. Bumagin “A highly active heterogeneous palladium catalysts supported on silica-carbon nanotubes hybrids”

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Biocatalysis: an article collection

05 Oct 2012

Beers, wines and cheeses are enjoyed around the world today and have been for millennia. In fact the practices of brewing and cheese-making pre-date recorded history so it is difficult to accurately determine when we first started using naturally occurring enzymes and microorganisms to create valuable (and in this case, tastier!) products.

Biocatalysts are of course used in far more diverse applications than the creation of food-stuffs, including in many organic syntheses and in the generation of fine chemicals. Due to their natural design, they can offer superior selectivity for particular products and have a far lower environmental impact than many traditional catalysts. Our knowledge and understanding of biocatalysts has increased dramatically in the last few decades, which has allowed us to develop biologically modified and biomimetic catalysts for a range of applications.

To keep you up to date with the latest advances in this rapidly expanding field we have collected together these high impact articles and made them free to access until the 31^st October!

Click here for the full list of free articles

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Shedding light on photosynthesis reactions

04 Oct 2012

Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer: A Carrefour of Chemical Reactivity

It has been 100 years, almost to the day, since Italian Chemist Giacomo Luigi Ciamician first proposed harnessing the sun’s power to produce energy. Writing in Science, Ciamician stated “And if in a distant future the supply of coal becomes completely exhausted, civilization will not be checked by that, for life and civilization will continue as long as the sun shines!”. With these words in mind, we have selected Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer: A Carrefour of Chemical Reactivity edited by Sebastiao Formosinho and Monica Barroso as the October book of the month.

Amongst other topics, this fascinating book discusses both natural and artificial photosynthesis and highlights the importance of proton-coupled electron transfer in biological systems, in particularly for bioenergetic conversion.

“The book gives a good insight into current research on a vibrant topic. It is to be expected that it will be the first in a long upcoming list of publications, given the importance of PCET processes such as the activation of water, production of H₂, reduction of CO₂, and reduction of N₂.” Reviewed in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Using personal accounts of experimental examples this book will provide a unique insight into the current understanding of this important reaction type.

Let the sun shine on your reactions.

Interested in other books on catalysis? Read more in the RSC Catalysis Series.

You may also be interested in the latest themed issue of Energy & Environmental Science on ‘Proton-coupled electron transfer’ .

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Organometallics in catalysis: an article collection

29 Aug 2012

Perhaps the most well-known applications of organometallics in catalysis are the Ziegler–Natta catalysts which are used to generate polymers, the catalysts are made up of mixtures of transition metal halides and organo-aluminium complexes. Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta were awarded the 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery and development of the catalysts, which today are the most commonly used for the manufacture of polythene.

The esteemed history of organometallics are not to be under-estimated and include Grignard’s reagents, the Heck reaction, Schrock catalysts, Grubbs’ catalysts and the Suzuki Coupling to name just a few. Organometallic compounds have revolutionised science and industry and to keep you up to date with the latest break-through research being made across all areas of organometallics in catalysis, we have made this cross-journal article collection free until the 26^th September.

Click here for the full list of free articles

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Ring opening of biomass-derived furan rings

14 Aug 2012

Fuel conversion from biomass to liquid hydrocarbons is a fast moving area of research and presents an opportunity to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels and move towards a more carbon neutral fuel economy. For use in transportation there are currently a range of strategies being considered to create liquid fuel from different biomass feedstocks (see Catalytic routes for the conversion of biomass into liquid hydrocarbon transportation fuels).

John C. Gordon, L. A. ‘‘Pete’’ Silks and colleagues have recently investigated a method of opening biomass-derived furan rings, under mild conditions, using homogeneous Bronsted acid catalysis.

The products observed during acid catalyzed ring opening of furan containing biomass-derived substrates are strongly influenced by furan substituents.

When generating fuel from non-food biomass there are many chemical hurdles to overcome, including the breakdown of lignocellulose and subsequent deoxygenation and hydrogenation of the resulting products. Gasification followed by Fischer–Tropsch reaction is a promising route to biomass conversion, but requires high temperatures and initial oxidation of the biomass.

An important challenge is the opening of ring structures.

While cellulose based biofuel precursors can be hydrolyzed under mild conditions, subsequent dehydration of these sugars leads to the generation of furans and aldehydes. In their Hot Article John C. Gordon et al. have investigated experimentally and theoretically the ring opening mechanism of furans on molecules derived from biomass, using acid catalysis <100^oC. This important study gives insight into the ring opening process which is necessary to create linear alkane chains for use as liquid fuels.

Download their article for free to find out more

Functional group dependence of the acid catalyzed ring opening of biomass derived furan rings: an experimental and theoretical study
Christopher R. Waidmann, Aaron W. Pierpont, Enrique R. Batista, John C. Gordon, Richard L. Martin, L. A. “Pete” Silks, Ryan M. West and Ruilian Wu
DOI: 10.1039/C2CY20395B

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Incredible ionic liquids: an article collection

16 Jul 2012

Ionic liquids are pretty self explanatory; they are ionic materials in a liquid state. In a ‘normal’ liquid, interactions are usually governed by Van de Waals or H-bonding forces. In ionic liquids it is ionic bonding interactions which dominate, meaning ionic liquids possess some interesting and unique properties.

The field of ionic liquids grew after Paul Walden’s observations of ethylammonium nitrate in 1914,¹ since then the study and use of ionic liquids has grown phenomenally, with applications in analytics, biology, electrochemistry, physical chemistry, engineering, solvents and catalysis.

The academic and industrial interest in ionic liquids has thrown up some remarkable discoveries, particularly in recent years, so to keep you up to date with latest break-through research in the field we have collected these high quality articles which are free to access!*

Click here for the full list of free articles

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Catalysis Science & Technology receives its first immediacy index!

03 Jul 2012

The 2011 Journal Citation Reports ® (Thomson Reuters, 2012) have been released and Catalysis Science & Technology has received its first immediacy index* of 0.588!

As a newly launched journal Catalysis Science & Technology won’t receive it’s first impact factor until next year.

We would like to thank all our authors, readers and referees who have contributed towards this success. Our thanks also go to our Editorial and Advisory Board Members and our Associate Editors for all their hard work and dedication to the journal!

We look forward to continued growth and success of the journal in the coming years!

A full list of RSC successes can be found at the RSC Impact Factor release.

For more information about Catalysis Science & Technology, including how to submit your research, check out the journal homepage.

*The Immediacy Index is a measure of how topical and urgent work published in a scientific journal is. It is measured by dividing the number of citations made to articles in a journal in a given year by the number of citeable articles published in the journal for the same year.

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Generating the intermediates for glutamate antagonists

14 Jun 2012

Laurent Lefort and Jared W. Fennell with colleagues had developed a way to improve the diastereoselectivity from 75:25 to 95:5 for a key reaction in generating glutamate antagonists.

The team screened a range of heterogeneous catalysts and found a Pd/C catalyst which should raise the yield by 40% and reduce the costs of the reaction compared to a currently used process involving a rhodium catalyst.

Glutamate acts as a neurotransmitter and antagonists are highly sought in the pharmaceutical industry for development of new drugs and treatments. Improving the yields and selectivity of the reactions to produce these compounds is an important area for catalyst development.

More details can be found in the teams article below, which will be published in our upcoming themed issue focusing on catalysis in industry

l
A detailed study of the diastereoselective catalytic hydrogenation of 6-hydroxytetrahydroisoquinoline-(3R)-carboxylic ester intermediates
Laurent Lefort, Natascha Sereinig, Harrie Straatman, David J. Ager, Johannes G. de Vries, John A. Werner, Roger B. Scherer, Todd D. Maloney, Mark D. Argentine, Kevin A. Sullivan and Jared W. Fennell
Catal. Sci. Technol., 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2CY20251D

Which will also include,

Advances in conversion of hemicellulosic biomass to furfural and upgrade to biofuels
Basudeb Saha, saikat dutta, Sudipta De and Imteyaz Alam
Catal. Sci. Technol., 2012, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/C2CY20235B

Kinetic aspects and deactivation behaviour of chromia-based catalysts in hydrogen chloride oxidation
Amol P Amrute, Cecilia Mondelli and Javier Pérez-Ramírez
Catal. Sci. Technol., 2012, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/C2CY20185B

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