Acid Catalysis in CO2-Enriched High-Temperature Water

水和二氧化碳，无论是液相还是超临界相，都被广泛认为是有机化学反应的环境友好介质。 大量的努力致力于在这些溶剂中开发有用的化学物质作为防止污染的手段。 所有这些先前的工作都分别使用水或二氧化碳。拟议的研究涉及使用这两种化合物的混合物作为酸催化的有机化学反应的反应介质。水将是该系统的主要组成部分。 不同酸催化反应的实验（例如，苯酚烷基化、醇脱水等）将进行，并将确定反应介质的组成、系统密度、温度、反应物浓度和反应时间对反应物转化率和产物产率的影响。就更广泛的影响而言，酸催化反应在化学工业中被广泛使用。据估计，商业上重要的酸催化反应的数量超过了所有其他催化反应的总和。因此，使酸催化更加环保的进步可能会对整个化学工业产生广泛的影响。将继续在研究生和本科生课堂上结合研究实例的做法。该研究项目的结果将提供反应动力学和机理见解，以及评估在富含二氧化碳的高温水中进行酸催化的技术，经济和环境可行性所需的信息。

Water and carbon dioxide, in either liquid or supercritical phases, are widely regarded asenvironmentally benign media for organic chemical reactions. Significant effort has beendevoted to developing useful chemistries in these solvents as a means of pollution prevention. All of this previous work has used either water or carbon dioxide separately. The proposed research involves the use of mixtures of these two compounds as the reaction medium for acid-catalyzed, organic chemical reactions. Water will be the main component in the system. Experiments with different acid-catalyzed reactions (e.g., phenol alkylation, alcohol dehydration, etc.) will be performed, and the effects of the composition of the reaction medium, the system density, temperature, reactant concentrations, and reaction time on reactant conversion and product yields will be determined. In terms of the broader impacts, acid-catalyzed reactions are used widely in the chemical industry. It has been estimated that the number of commercially important acid-catalyzed reactions exceeds the number of all other catalytic reactions combined. Therefore, advances that make acid-catalysis more environmentally benign could have a broad impact throughout the chemical industry. The practice of incorporating examples from the research in graduate and undergraduate class will be continued. The results from this research project will provide the reaction kinetics and mechanistic insights, information that is needed to assess the technical, economic, and environmental feasibility of doing acid catalysis in carbon dioxide-enriched high temperature water.