This
paper reports on the first detailed studies on green and sustainable
methods for the repetitive batch hydroboration of terminal and internal
alkynes by the effective immobilization of Ru(CO)Cl(H)(PPh3)3 in various ionic liquids (RuH@IL) or in biphasic ionic
liquid/supercritical CO2 (RuH@IL/scCO2) systems.
The systems RuH(1 mol %)@[EMPyrr][OTf](IL8) and RuH(1
mol %)@[EMPyrr][NTf2](IL9) were found to be
the most effective immobilization approaches, with both allowing the
completion of over 10 complete catalytic cycles in the hydroboration
of a series of different alkynes. An increase in the catalyst content
to 2 mol % (RuH(2 mol %)@[EMPyrr][NTf2](IL9)) allowed for the completion of 25 repetitive batches, which proved
the high utility of the developed system. In each case, high yields
of products were obtained, and their purity was confirmed through
NMR, MS, and ICP techniques. On the other hand, the use of RuH(1 mol
%)@/[EMPyrr][OTf](IL8)/scCO2 in the hydroboration
of phenylacetylene with pinacolborane, permitted effective completion
of 8 cycles, at a much lower temperature than that at which RuH@IL
was used (40 vs 100 °C). Moreover, the application of such a
system has a positive impact on the environment and process sustainability
via the exchanging of organic solvent for scCO2 used for
product extraction and separation when working with RuH@IL. The strategies
presented in this work are, so far, the most effective and recyclable
systems based on ILs for the hydroboration of alkynes with high TONs.
In the future, they will be applied in continuous flow regime.