The increasing demand for clean and environmentally-benign processes is driving the way we develop and deliver our chemistry. We believe that heterogeneous catalysis in flow can make the difference in reducing the environmental footprint. The development of heterogeneous flow protocol may represent a new industrial breakthrough for the implementation of sustainable processes.

We have disclosed a diverse range of processes using this concept to carryout transfer hydrogenation of carbonyl compounds [1] and cross coupling reactions [2]. We are currently working on different processes to broaden the spectrum of applications.

Furthermore we are working on the idea of using solid reagents within the flow setup to speed up synthetic procedures and reduce the usage of solvents and the production of waste materials.

Publications

1. A mild and efficient flow procedure for the transfer hydrogenation of ketones and aldehydes using hydrous zirconia C. Battilocchio, J.M. Hawkins, S.V. Ley, Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 2278-2281.

2. Flow based, cerium oxide enhanced, low level palladium Sonogashira and Heck coupling reactions by perovskite catalysts C. Battilocchio, B. N. Bhawal, R. Chorghade, B. J. Deadman, J.M. Hawkins, S.V. Ley, Isr. J. Chem., 2013, ASAP.