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Science 14 April 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5771, pp. 257 - 261
DOI: 10.1126/science.1123787
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Reports

Catalytic Alkane Metathesis by Tandem Alkane Dehydrogenation-Olefin Metathesis

Alan S. Goldman,1* Amy H. Roy,2 Zheng Huang,2 Ritu Ahuja,1 William Schinski,3 Maurice Brookhart2*

With petroleum supplies dwindling, there is increasing interest in selective methods for transforming other carbon feedstocks into hydrocarbons suitable for transportation fuel. We report the development of highly productive, well-defined, tandem catalytic systems for the metathesis of n-alkanes. Each system comprises one molecular catalyst (a "pincer"-ligated iridium complex) that effects alkane dehydrogenation and olefin hydrogenation, plus a second catalyst (molecular or solid-phase) for olefin metathesis. The systems all show complete selectivity for linear (n-alkane) product. We report one example that achieves selectivity with respect to the distribution of product molecular weights, in which n-decane is the predominant high-molecular-weight product of the metathesis of two moles of n-hexane.

1 Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
2 Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
3 Chevron Research and Technology Co., 100 Chevron Way, Richmond, CA 94802, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: agoldman{at}rutchem.rutgers.edu; brookhar{at}email.unc.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)