Methane as raw material in synthetic chemistry: the final frontier

In spite of its large availability in natural or shale gas deposits, the use of methane in the chemical industry as feedstock from a synthetic point of view yet constitutes a challenge in modern chemistry. Only the production of the so-called syngas , a mixture of CO and H 2 derived from the complet...

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Published inChemical Society reviews Vol. 42; no. 23; pp. 889 - 882
Main Authors Caballero, Ana, Pérez, Pedro J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England 07.12.2013
Subjects
Activation
Catalysts
Chemical industries
Coordination compounds
Deposition
Methane
Methyl alcohol
Raw materials
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Summary:In spite of its large availability in natural or shale gas deposits, the use of methane in the chemical industry as feedstock from a synthetic point of view yet constitutes a challenge in modern chemistry. Only the production of the so-called syngas , a mixture of CO and H 2 derived from the complete cleavage of the methane molecule, operates at the industrial level. The relevance of methane in the current industry, mainly toward methanol production, is described in this Tutorial. The methanol economy has been already proposed as an alternative to current fuel sources. Methanol synthesis directly from methane would imply the activation of the latter. Toward this end, the different methodologies reported to activate methane with transition metal complexes as well as the few examples of the catalytic functionalization of methane are presented. The activation and catalytic functionalization of methane are reviewed showing that this area requires further and urgent development in the incoming years.
Bibliography:At Universidad de Huelva since 1993, Pedro J. Pérez has been Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Director of the Center for Research in Sustainable Chemistry (CIQSO). He received his PhD at Universidad de Sevilla (Prof. Ernesto Carmona) and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with Prof. Maurice Brookhart and Joseph L. Templeton. Early work on olefin catalytic functionalization by carbene, nitrene and oxo transfer reactions with group 11 metal-based catalysts led to the current interest in the use of such a strategy for the functionalization of unreactive C-H bonds, with particular emphasis on alkanes and, ultimately, methane. In 2007 he received the Inorganic Chemistry Award of the Royal Chemical Society of Spain.
Ana Caballero graduated in Chemistry at the Universidad de Sevilla (1999) and obtained her PhD from the Universidad de Huelva under the supervision of Prof. Pedro J. Pérez (2004). Later she moved to the LCC (CNRS, Toulouse) for a postdoctoral stay with Prof. Sylviane Sabo-Etienne. She returned (2007) to the Universidad de Huelva as a "Ramon y Cajal" Postdoctoral Associate, to continue as Assistant Prof. and currently as Junior Lecturer. In the recent years she has focussed on the development of the project involving the catalytic functionalization of methane based on the use of supercritical fluids as reaction medium.
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ISSN:0306-0012
1460-4744
DOI:10.1039/c3cs60120j