Butanol has emerged as the front-running sustainable liquid fuel replacement for gasoline. The development of biosynthetic pathways for its synthesis have dominated recent research but these are still challenged by very low conversion and modest selectivity.  An attractive alternative is catalytically upgrading more readily available (bio) ethanol is attractive but this is hampered by modest selectivity in most cases.This paper will report homogeneous ruthenium diphosphine catalysts for the upgrade of ethanol to butanol which show selectivity to n-butanol of over 95% at good conversion. Our preliminary mechanistic study into this system will be presented, which suggests high selectivity is achieved because the catalyst imparts control over acetaldehyde aldol condensation reactions, with evidence for an on-metal condensation step.  The crucial role of ligand structure in this regard will be discussed.

Catalytic conversion of ethanol to an advanced biofuel: Unprecedented selectivity to n-butanol

245th National Meeting (2013)

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