Hydrogen sulfide is a toxic gas often found in significant concentrations in petroleum feedstocks such as natural gas. The state-of-the-art technology for removing hydrogen sulfide from this “sour” gas is the Claus Process, which converts hydrogen sulfide into elemental sulfur, a form of sulfur that is less toxic and more amenable to safe storage and handling. However, the traditional Claus process only removes 95-97% of the hydrogen sulfide from the sour gas and secondary treatment is required to remove the remaining amount. The major tailgas treatment processes each have fundamental limitations, creating a need for improved catalysts for hydrogen sulfide capture and oxidation. The Wallen research group is focused on the use of second-sphere hydrogen bonding to promote the coordination of hydrogen sulfide to late first-row transition metals to inform the future design of next-generation catalysts used in Claus tailgas processing. The synthesis of an electronically-diverse set of tetradentate asymmetric sulfonamidate-ether ligands and corresponding metal complexes will be presented with spectroscopic and crystallographic characterization. The coordination chemistry and reactivity of these complexes with industrially-relevant small protic molecules such as hydrogen sulfide, hydrazine, and hydroxylamine will also be presented.

Coordination of industrially-relevant protic molecules to metal-sulfonamidate complexes with second-sphere hydrogen bonding

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