Heterogeneous alkene epoxidation: past, present and future

Aerobic epoxidation of propene over silver (111) and (100) facet catalysts

“…[2][3][4][5][6][7] Interesting alternative routes for the production of propylene oxide are based on direct epoxidation of propylene with molecular oxygen, [8][9][10] in a similar way as ethylene oxide is nowadays industrially produced, [11][12][13][14][15] or otherwise with hydrogen peroxide formed "in situ" on gold and palladium based catalysts. [16][17][18][19] In ethylene epoxidation, selectivities higher than 80% are obtained using Ag/α-alumina catalysts, and increased attention has been paid to silver based catalyst for production of propylene oxide by direct epoxidation using molecular oxygen.…”

“…[16][17][18][19] In ethylene epoxidation, selectivities higher than 80% are obtained using Ag/α-alumina catalysts, and increased attention has been paid to silver based catalyst for production of propylene oxide by direct epoxidation using molecular oxygen. However, selectivity towards propylene oxide during epoxidation with air is usually lower than 40% at 10% conversion, [6][7][20][21] which makes industrial implementation not viable.…”

“…After extensive theoretical and experimental investigations of the ethylene epoxidation process over silver-based catalysts [6,12,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] , a fairly good understanding of the reaction mechanism, [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] the role of catalyst promoters (such as chlorine and alkali metals) [6,12] and other factors such as catalyst particle size, shape and morphology [31][32] on the catalytic performance has been achieved. Direct ethylene and propylene epoxidation over silver-based catalysts using oxygen as oxidizing agent are generally assumed to follow the same reaction pathway, which is schematically shown in Scheme 1.…”

Reaction mechanism for methanol oxidation on Au(111): A density functional theory study

“…During the past two decades, numerous efforts have been devoted to developing the catalytic activity of gold for different purposes, for instance, the use of fuel cells [2], synthesis of esters, olefin epoxidation [3][4][5][6][7][8], and selective oxidation of alcohols [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Among them, alcohol oxidation is of particular interest since it is not only one of the most important reactions in industry and organic synthesis, but also one that Au-based catalysts carry out most efficiently.…”

The study of cyclooctene oxidation with molecular oxygen catalyzed by VSi2

“…The most effective method of increasing the reaction rate and selectivity of desired product formation is application of a catalyst in this process [3][4][5][6]. The catalyst can influence on various elementary stages of the oxidation process of hydrocarbons by molecular oxygen: radical formation, chain propagation and termination reactions.…”