Synthesis of amines from nitrile hydrogenation on Co/SiO2: Effect of the substrate structure

MILTON AGÜERO; SEGOBIA DARIO; TRASARTI ANDRES

SANTA FE

Workshop; French Argentinean Workshop on Heterogeneous Catalysis; 2023

Nitrogen compounds, and particularly amines, constitute one of the fundamental bases oflife, many neurotransmitters, alkaloids and other active biomolecules are nitrogencompounds. A convenient route for amines production is the hydrogenation of nitriles, due toavailability of reagents, low price and atomic efficiency high. This reaction proceeds throughhydrogenation/condensation consecutive reactions leading to the formation of a mixture ofprimary, secondary and tertiary amines. Frequently, a high selectivity to a particular amine iswanted in order to eliminate the cost of product separation process. Increasing researchefforts have been devoted to selectively convert saturated nitriles to a given saturatedprimary (PA), secondary (SA) or tertiary amine (TA).. There is a generalagreement that on metal-supported catalysts the reaction selectivity depends mainly on thenature of the metal component, however, operating conditions, catalyst preparationmethod and the solvent nature have also an important influence on the reaction activity andselectivity. There are very few studies that investigate the effect of the nitrile structure on thereaction activity and selectivity. In the present work we study the effect of the nitrile structureon the reaction activity and selectivity in solvents of different nature. We discuss the hydrogenation in liquid phase aliphatic (acetonitrile, AN, butyronitrile, BN, isobutyronitrile, IBN) and aromatic nitriles(benzonitrile, BeN and benzyl cyanide, BC) on Co/SiO2, using solvents of different chemical nature.