This critical review covers advances in the field of glycerol-derived solvents, with a particular focus on hazardous solvents substitution issues.

5In spite of the inherent advantages of reuse and stability of immobilized chiral catalysts, they are frequently not enough to justify the effort necessary to immobilize the chiral complexes, unless additional advantages are found. When chiral catalysts are immobilized on solids with surface and pores of well controlled size, shape and dimensionality, the solid may act as a nano-reactor reducing the free movement of reagents, intermediates and, mainly, transition states. In this way 10 relative energies of the transition states leading to the different stereoisomers may be modified and, as a consequence, the stereochemical result of the reaction is modified when compared with the obtained in solution. The use of support effects to improve and/or change the stereochemical result of enantioselective reactions is currently emerging as an area of interest, but still with a limited number of examples. A better comprehension of the support influence will be needed in 15 order to allow, in the near future, the design of chiral ligands better adapted to this strategy.

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