Solid Base Catalysis of Hydrocarbon Functionalization for Sustainable Chemical Synthesis

Reducing the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of the chemical industry will require processes that utilize non-fossil feedstocks and minimal non-renewable energy.

CO2 insertion to transform low-value hydrocarbons into high volume commodity chemicals and materials

This project will investigate a new concept for performing an unprecedented transformation—the catalytic insertion of CO₂ into hydrocarbon C–H bonds to form carboxylic acids and their derivatives. These compounds comprise a large class of commodity chemicals with multi-megaton applications. Because of the low reactivity of C–H bonds and CO₂,

all existing methods for this transformation require excess amounts of extremely resource-intensive reagents that have large GHG footprints, which defeats the purpose of using CO₂ as a carbon source. In this project, the research team will use porous solid-base materials to perform hydrocarbon CO₂ insertions in catalytic cycles that consume no other reagents and generate no waste byproducts. The team will investigate the fundamental chemistry of solid bases and design reactors to minimize the process requirements.

Publications

A Closed Cycle for Esterifying Aromatic Hydrocarbons with CO2 and Alcohol Nature Chemistry 2019

Awarded 2018