Accelerated Development of Cat@MOF catalysts for Industrially Relevant Hydrogenation

催化加氢具有广泛的工业应用，据估计，今天在化学品生产中使用的所有反应中有10-20%是催化加氢。这个项目的目标是一个新的Cat@MOF催化剂家族，基于将均相氢化催化剂（Cat）结合到非均相金属有机框架（MOF）材料的孔隙中，用于这些重要的转化。与现有的催化剂相比，这些结构在活性提高、选择性更好、易于使用和分离等方面具有显著的优势。通过将现有的均相加氢催化剂与众所周知的等正交MOF家族（其中金属和有机连接器可以很容易地修改，同时保持相同的MOF拓扑和结构）相结合，将组装一个大型的新型Cat@MOF材料库。这些新的催化剂将初步筛选和优化使用自动化的高通量方法。性能最好的Cat@MOF材料将被升级，并安装到新的流动反应器中，初步研究的重点是将其应用于生物衍生原料和废物原料（如乙酰丙酸和二氧化碳）的加氢，以产生增值化学品。

Catalytic hydrogenations have widespread industrial applications, and it is estimated that 10-20% of all reactions used today in the production of chemicals are catalytic hydrogenations. This project targets a new family of Cat@MOF catalysts for these important transformations, based upon the incorporation of homogeneous hydrogenation catalysts (Cat) into the pores of heterogeneous metal organic framework (MOF) materials. These constructs have been shown to possess significant benefits over existing catalysts in term of improved activity, better/alternative selectivity, and ease-of-use / separation. A large novel library of Cat@MOF materials will be assembled by combining existing homogeneous hydrogenation catalysts with well-known isoreticular MOF families (in which the metal and organic connectors can be readily modified whilst maintaining the same MOF topology and structure). These new catalysts will be initially screened and optimised using automated high throughput methodology. The best performing Cat@MOF materials will be upscaled and built into new flow reactors, with initial studies focusing upon their application for the hydrogenation of bio-derived and waste feedstocks such as levulinic acid and carbon dioxide to yield value-added chemicals.