Novel approaches for catalyst recycling in organocatalysis

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Udo Kragl
• Subject Area: Technical Chemistry
• Term: from 2014 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 263491208

A significant disadvantage of organocatalysis so far is the use of high catalyst loadings between 1 and 30 mol% to obtain high selectivities and productivities. Within the first funding project period this drawback has been overcome by catalyst recycling as well as simple work up and product isolation with the development of three efficient catalyst recycling concepts. However, these enabling techniques are not fully reflected in the field of new catalytic synthetic methods as well as in the field of process engineering. Therefore, in the next project period advanced organocatalytic processes such as photochemical reactions should be combined with these enabling techniques by simultaneous optimization with micro reaction flow chemistry. Apart from the development of new organocatalytic processes and their mechanistic and theoretical understanding also the aspect of process engineering will be included and investigated at an early stage of this project. The main approach for catalyst recycling will be based on switchable solvent systems since the reaction takes place in the homogeneous phase and thereby maintaining the advantages of homogeneous catalysis. Further investigations on polymerized ionic liquids such as diffusion experiments and reactor experiments should be completed.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants