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Catalysis

A greener solution

Nature volume 423, pages 930–931 (2003)Cite this article

In a 'biphasic' system, a catalyst dissolved in a liquid phase can be recycled if the reaction products are captured in an adjacent phase. A catalyst-storing liquid that is plentiful and environmentally friendly has been found.

Catalysis is the key to sustainable synthetic chemistry. Homogeneous catalysts, dispersed in a solution of reactants, have many potential advantages over solid-phase, heterogeneous ones: the molecular nature of the catalyst means that it can be designed rationally to be selective and highly active. The difficulty is in separating out the products and recycling the catalytic material. An elegant solution to this problem, however, is 'multiphase catalysis'1: the catalyst resides in one liquid phase and the reactants and products are dissolved in a second phase. Supercritical carbon dioxide2 — carbon dioxide under pressure, in a phase neither truly liquid nor gas — has been found to be a useful reactant/product phase in such systems3,4. In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Heldebrandt and Jessop5 introduce an attractive system using poly(ethylene glycol), a material that is benign and readily available, to immobilize a homogeneous catalyst while an adjacent phase of supercritical CO2 (scCO2) ensures selective extraction of the product.

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Figure 1: Biphasic catalysis.

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  1. Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry, RWTH Aachen, Worringer Weg 1, Aachen, D-52074, Germany

    Walter Leitner

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  1. Walter Leitner
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Correspondence to Walter Leitner.

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Leitner, W. A greener solution. Nature 423, 930–931 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/423930a

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