“…Metallic palladium is known to selectively reduce triple bonds (Tedeschi & Clark, 1962) and Pd=C catalysts are known to hydrogenate 2-butyne-1,4-diol to 2-butene-1,4-diol with selectivity up to ¿ 99% (Chaudhari, Gholap, Emig, & Hofmann 1987a;Chaudhari, Jaganathan, Kohle, Emig, & Hofmann, 1987b;Winterbottom et al, 1997). The use of activated carbon in the form of ÿlamentous woven materials as catalytic supports have been already reported in the scientiÿc literature (Jin, Park, Lee, & Ryu, 1996;Mochida et al, 1997;Mochida et al, 1997a,b;Perez et al, 1997;Yoshikawa, Yasutake, & Mochida, 1998;Moon, Park, Kim, & Seo, 1999;Ryu, Kim, Li, & Jaroniec, 1999;Mochida et al, 2000). These supports have advantageous characteristics as compared to traditional activated carbons, like: (a) high speciÿc surface area (SSA) of 600 -3000 m 2 =g; (b) morphological network formed by short micro-pores with narrow size distribution, ensuring fast adsorption=desorption; (c) easy reuse due to simple handling (could be bent and rolled); (d) low resistance to the passage of uid; (e) high uid permeability.…”