International Research Fellowship Program: Homogeneous Catalysis in Supercritical Fluids: Density Effects and Multiphase Processing

国际研究奖学金计划使美国科学家和工程师能够在国外进行三到二十四个月的研究。该计划的奖项提供了联合研究的机会，并利用国外独特或互补的设施、专业知识和实验条件。该奖项将支持Aaron M.Scurto博士与德国Max Plank Institut fur Kohlenforschung的Walter Leitner博士合作12个月的研究奖学金。该项目的一个目标是为传统的污染环境的溶剂系统创造技术上可行和经济的替代工艺。该项目将致力于利用超临界流体中的均相催化来优化某种成环化合物的生产。均相催化剂通常是一种化学活性金属，它与有机分子结合在一起，使其在与反应物的超临界流体相中溶解。它的目的是加速反应，并选择性地产生一种产品而不是其他副产品。一种催化剂将被分子工程设计为既能在超临界流体相中溶解，又能对化合物具有选择性。将研究产物形成对密度的敏感性。人们认为，在较低的压力下，反应物的聚集会产生一种产品，而较高的压力会产生不同的物种。另一种方法是创造一种可溶于离子液体但不能溶于超临界二氧化碳的催化剂。离子液体是在室温下是液体的盐，既不蒸发也不溶于超临界流体。因此，催化剂促进了离子液体中的反应，只有产物和反应物在超临界流体相中溶解，而不是离子液体或催化剂。这个两相系统将被用来开发一个连续的过程，这对工业来说是非常可取的。莱特纳是超临界流体中均相催化领域的开创性研究人员之一。

0202714ScurtoThe International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support a twelve month research fellowship by Dr. Aaron M. Scurto to work with Dr. Walter Leitner at the Max Plank Institut fur Kohlenforschung in Germany.A goal of this project is to create technically feasible and economical replacement processes for traditional environmentally polluting solvent systems. The project will work to optimize the production of a certain ring-forming compound using homogeneous catalysis in supercritical fluids. A homogeneous catalyst is usually a chemically-active metal that has been bonded to organic molecules rendering it soluble in a supercritical fluid phase with the reactants. Its purpose is to accelerate the reaction and to selectively yield one product over other byproducts. A catalyst will be molecularly engineered to be both soluble in a supercritical fluid phase and selective for the compound. The sensitivity of the product formation to density will be investigated. It is believed that clustering of the reactants at lower pressures produces one product, while higher pressures produce a different species. Another approach will be to create a catalyst that is soluble in ionic liquids but not in supercritical CO2. Ionic liquids are salts that are liquid at room temperature and neither evaporates nor dissolves in supercritical fluids. Thus the catalyst promotes the reaction in the ionic liquid, and only the products and reactants are soluble in the supercritical fluid phase, not the ionic liquid or catalyst. This two-phase system will be used to develop a continuous process, which is highly desirable for industry.Dr. Leitner is one of the seminal researchers in the area of homogeneous catalysis in supercritical fluids.