| AVS 66th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Fundamental Discoveries in Heterogeneous Catalysis Focus Topic | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session HC+OX+SS-WeA |
| Session: | Metal-Support Interactions Driving Heterogeneously-Catalyzed Reactions |
| Presenter: | Nicholas Brunelli, The Ohio State University |
| Authors: | N.A. Brunelli, The Ohio State University A.P. Spanos, The Ohio State University A. Parulkar, The Ohio State University N. Deshpande, The Ohio State University |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Ring opening epoxides produces compounds that are valuable in the production of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Recent work1has demonstrated that the bulky reactants typically involved in fine chemical synthesis benefit from reducing the length scale of the materials to produce nano-zeolites (nano-Sn-Beta), which requires using a custom-synthesized structure directing agent in hydroxide conditions. While the nanozeolites can achieve higher overall conversion than Sn-Beta synthesized using fluoride conditions, the initial reaction rate is higher for Sn-Beta that tends to be hydrophobic compared to nano-Sn-Beta that is demonstrated to be hydrophilic. These results suggest that the alcohol ring opening reaction is sensitive to the reaction environment. The surface of nano-Sn-Beta can be treated to reduce the amount of defects and correspondingly increase the hydrophobicity. Interestingly, the treatment of nano-Sn-Beta materials more than doubles the observed reaction rate. Overall, this demonstrates a valuable method to tune the reaction environment that could be widely applicable to many chemical reactions.
References
(1) Parulkar, A.; Spanos, A. P.; Deshpande, N.; Brunelli, N. A. Synthesis and catalytic testing of Lewis acidic nano zeolite Beta for epoxide ring opening with alcohols. Applied Catalysis A: General, 2019, 577, 28–34.