Seminar «Reducing agents in amides synthesis»

25 November at 14:30 MSK

Nature as well as our body could not avoid redox processes. We gave to nature a head start of 400 million years. During this time nature created a lot of unique unbelievably effective processes including the reductive ones. For example, The reduction of carbon dioxide to glucose. What did mankind create/develop for the reduction process? Well, we have more options in processes than nature does and because of that we can use more compounds and more reaction conditions than nature can. It seems that for reduction humanity invented the best reductant out there – hydrogen, the simplest and the smallest molecule. However, even in this case we have a few serious disadvantages. Today almost all hydrogen is being synthesized from natural gas. The synthesis includes 3 steps, 3 different catalysts and heating up to 800 degrees Celsius and still we are getting mixture of gases which we need to separate. If we want to use more familiar to us hydrides we need to provide extra steps and extra energy for heating. Another problem is selectivity. In organic reactions we can see that hydrogen and hydrides can reduce not only the bond we need to reduce but also other functional groups. So what criteria do we want from a reductant? This is the topic for our seminar.

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