Parahydrogen
can be used in catalytic hydrogenations to achieve
substantial enhancement of NMR signals of the reaction products and
in some cases of the reaction reagents as well. The corresponding
nuclear spin hyperpolarization technique, known as parahydrogen-induced
polarization (PHIP), has been applied to boost the sensitivity of
NMR spectroscopy and magnetic resonance imaging by several orders
of magnitude. The catalyst properties are of paramount importance
for PHIP because the addition of parahydrogen to a substrate must
be pairwise. This requirement significantly narrows down the range
of the applicable catalysts. Herein, we study an efficient silica-supported
vanadium oxo organometallic complex (VCAT) in hydrogenation and dehydrogenation
reactions in terms of efficient PHIP production. This is the first
example of group 5 catalyst used to produce PHIP. Hydrogenations of
propene and propyne with parahydrogen over VCAT demonstrated production
of hyperpolarized propane and propene, respectively. The achieved
NMR signal enhancements were 200–300-fold in the case of propane
and 1300-fold in the case of propene. Propane dehydrogenation in the
presence of parahydrogen produced no hyperpolarized propane, but instead
the hyperpolarized side-product 1-butene was detected. Test experiments
of other group 5 (Ta) and group 4 (Zr) catalysts showed a much lower
efficiency in PHIP as compared to that of VCAT. The results prove
the general conclusion that vanadium-based catalysts and other group
4 and group 5 catalysts can be used to produce PHIP. The hydrogenation/dehydrogenation
processes, however, are accompanied by side reactions leading, for
example, to C4, C2, and C1 side products. Some of the side products
like 1-butene and 2-butene were shown to appear hyperpolarized, demonstrating
that the reaction mechanism includes pairwise parahydrogen addition
in these cases as well.