Valorization of Ethanol: Ruthenium-Catalyzed Guerbet and Sequential Functionalization Processes

We report a ruthenium-catalyzed tandem Guerbet–alkylation strategy for the valorization of ethanol. The products of ethanol upgrading (higher-order alcohols) undergo subsequent C–C bond forming reactions with four carbon pronucleophiles and one ylide. Studies into catalyst design led to the developm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:ACS catalysis Vol. 12; no. 11; pp. 6729 - 6736
Main Authors: Davies, Alex M., Li, Zhong-Yuan, Stephenson, Corey R. J., Szymczak, Nathaniel K.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States American Chemical Society 03-06-2022
American Chemical Society (ACS)
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Summary:We report a ruthenium-catalyzed tandem Guerbet–alkylation strategy for the valorization of ethanol. The products of ethanol upgrading (higher-order alcohols) undergo subsequent C–C bond forming reactions with four carbon pronucleophiles and one ylide. Studies into catalyst design led to the development of ClRu­(5-Mebpi)­(PPh3)2 (bpi = 1,3-bis­(2′-pyridylimino)­isoindolate) as a highly efficient catalyst for producing biofuels and value-added chemicals from ethanol via Guerbet and tandem Guerbet reactions. This catalyst affords 65% higher-order alcohols in short reaction times (2 h), providing the highest TON (155,890) and TOF (12,690 h–1 ) for a homogeneous catalyst reported to date.
Bibliography:USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
SC0020191
ISSN:2155-5435
2155-5435
DOI:10.1021/acscatal.2c01570