Abstract
Tremendous efforts have been devoted to apply the catalysis in chemical industries with the goal of minimizing the waste following the requirements of green chemistry. Transition metals are particularly effective in catalyzing many industrially important processes under mild conditions and providing selectivity for the processes where the formation of special products is targeted. Three major reactions will be discussed where the use of transition metals as catalysts is expected to play a vital role in the industrial transition towards a green and sustainable future: (i) the conversion of neat acetone to 2-propanol with 100% selectivity under ambient conditions; (ii) the complete hydrogenation of neat arenes to cyclohexane derivatives with 100% selectivity at room temperature and low pressure of H2 gas; and (iii) the hydrolytic dehydrogenation of ammonia borane which has been considered as one of the most promising candidates for the solid hydrogen storage materials. The use of colloidal transition metal nanocatalysts provide a significantly green way for the conversion of neat acetone to isopropanol. It will be shown that the zeolite confined transition metal nanoclusters catalyze the hydrogenation of neat benzene to cyclohexane with high turnover frequency and long lifetime. Hydrogen generation from the hydrolysis of ammonia borane at room temperature is shown to be catalyzed by noble metal(0) nanoparticles, supported on the surface of oxide nanopowder. Particularly, making the noble metal(0) nanoparticles to be magnetically separable by supporting them on the magnetic oxide nanopowders results in the formation of the nanocatalysts with superb catalytic activity, exceptionally long lifetime and outstanding reusability for releasing 3 equivalent H2 gas per mole of ammonia borane at room temperature; that is, very high utilization efficiency of transition metal(0) nanocatalysts is obtained for hydrogen generation.
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