NOVEL EPOXIDATION CATALYST Titanium complex anchored inside zeolite

Abstract

Scientists at the Davy Faraday Laboratory of the Royal Institution of Great Britain have created a new catalyst for epoxidizing olefins by anchoring titanium metal complexes to the inner walls of a mesoporous zeolite (with medium-sized pores). The work extends the advantages of zeolites' shape selectivity to molecules that are too big to fit into the smaller channels of microporous zeolites. And opens a new route for preparing novel catalysts with large concentrations of well-spaced and structurally welldefined catalytic sites. The new catalyst—developed by a group including Thomas Maschmeyer, Fernando Rey, and Gopinathan Sankar, under the direction of Sir John Meurig Thomas—has been successfully tested on cyclohexene and pinene [ Nature , 378 , 159 (1995)]. Thomas regards the work as some of the best he has been involved with in catalysis because it is a new strategy for producing high-performance, mesoporous inorganic catalysts. Industry observers express interest, but they are withholding judgment...