The Earth is a consummate organic chemist, conducting an enormous range of reactions that occur in water as the solvent and that use abundant and benign reagents and catalysts, in contrast to the organic solvents, rare metal catalysts, extreme oxidants and reductants and concentrated acids used in much of laboratory and industrial organic chemistry. As part of a research program that explores the thermodynamics, kinetics, and mechanisms of hydrothermal organic chemistry under geologic conditions, we have uncovered several useful organic chemical transformations that can be performed under geologic conditions as opposed to the conditions described in traditional organic chemistry textbooks. Specifically, we have found selective oxidation of alcohols in water as solvent with copper(II) as the oxidant, instead of the toxic chromium(VI) as oxidant in methylene chloride solvent. We have also performed selective reduction of carbon-carbon double bonds with powdered nickel instead of the rare metal catalysts such as palladium or platinum. Activation of carbon-hydrogen bonds was observed using the simple mineral sphalerite instead of organometallic complexes based on iridium, palladium or rhodium. We describe these new processes as geomimicry, the geologic analog of biomimicry. As an emerging field of scientific study, geomimicry asks the question "what can we learn from how the Earth does chemistry to change how humans should really do chemistry"? Geomimicry offers a potential paradigm shift for green chemistry toward new processes that do not pollute because they are the Earth’s ways of doing things. One potential commercial application is hydrothermal biofuel processing, which can be performed inexpensively, under moderate hydrothermal conditions, using bulk metallic nickel and iron. We will describe geomimetic deoxygenation of polyols as model biomass products that can be converted into their hydrocarbon equivalents with removal of all oxygen atoms.

Geomomicry: Chemists learning from geologists

2019 Spring National Meeting

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