Hydro-Metathesis of Long-Chain Olefin (1-decene) using Well-Defined Silica-Supported Tungsten (VI), Molybdenum (VI) and Tantalum (V) Catalysts

Abstract

Nowadays, catalysis lies at the heart of economy growth mainly in the petroleum industry. Catalysis can offer real and potential solutions to the current challenges for a long-term sustainable energy, green chemistry, and environmental protection. In this context, one of the most important and future prosperity promising catalytic applications in the petrochemical field is hydrocarbons metathesis; it consists on the conversion of both renewable and non-petroleum fossil carbon sources to transportation fuels.

Olefin metathesis has become one of the standard methodologies for constructing C-C bonds in many organic transformation reactions. This owed to the numerous types of metathesis reactions that have been developed, for example, enyne, ring-opening and closing, self and cross metathesis, etc. But the one step conversion of olefin to alkanes has not been studied much. Recently, only one such a work has been published for the hydro-metathesis of propylene by tantalum hydride supported on KCC-1 in dynamic reactor.

With this knowledge, we thought to study the hydro-metathesis using liquid olefin (1-decene). Another aspect of using 1-decene comes from our previous experience on metathesis of n-decane where the first step is the conversion of decane to 1-decene and subsequently to different chain length alkanes with W-alkyl/alkylidene catalyst. In this way, it would be easy for us to use different catalysts and compare them with parent catalyst concerning TON. We found 100% conversion with TON of 1010 using supported WMe6 onto SiO2-700 [(≡Si-O-)WMe5] against the previous results for n-decane showing 20% conversion and TON of 153.

In this work, we disclose the hydro-metathesis reaction of 1-decene using well-defined silica supported W(VI), Mo(VI) and Ta(V) alkyl catalysts in batch reactor condition. This work is divided into three major sections; first chapter contains an introduction to the field of catalysis and surface organometallic chemistry. In second chapter, we describe all the experimental procedures of the catalysts. The third chapter is devoted to the characterization and interpretation followed by catalytic reactions. Finally, a brief conclusion of the present study is given.