Fine Chemicals Synthesis By Selective Hydrogenation of Unsaturated Nitriles

SEGOBIA DARIO; APESTEGUIA CARLOS; TRASARTI ANDRES

Denver

Congreso; 25th North American Meeting (NAM).; 2017

The liquid-phase hydrogenation of unsaturated nitriles is an important route to obtain unsaturated primary amines that are valuable intermediates in agrochemical, pharmaceutical, and fine chemicals industries. Nevertheless, the selective hydrogenation of the C≡N group in unsaturated nitriles is still a challenging objective in heterogeneous catalysis. In general, the hydrogenation of unsaturated nitriles may form three types of products: unsaturated amines (hydrogenation of C≡N bond), saturated nitriles (hydrogenation of C=C bond) and saturated amines (hydrogenation of C=C and C≡N bonds). Besides, in order to obtain selectively primary amines, the coupling reactions leading to secondary and tertiary amines have to be avoided. Ammonia is often employed to suppress the formation of higher amines by shifting equilibrium to the primary amine since ammonia is released in the coupling reactions leading to secondary and tertiary amines; nevertheless, the addition of ammonia entails concerns related to corrosion and disposal of spent base materials. In this work, we investigate the selective hydrogenation of cinnamonitrile (CN) to cinnamylamine (CA) on silica-supported Co, Ni, Ru and Cu metals