Highly Efficient Base-Free Dehydrogenation of Formic Acid at Low Temperature

Christoph Prichatz; Monica Trincado; Lilin Tan; Fernando Casas; Anja Kammer; Henrik Junge; Matthias Beller; Hansjörg Grützmacher

doi:10.1002/cssc.201801072

Highly Efficient Base-Free Dehydrogenation of Formic Acid at Low Temperature

ChemSusChem. 2018 Sep 21;11(18):3092-3095. doi: 10.1002/cssc.201801072. Epub 2018 Aug 15.

Authors

Christoph Prichatz¹, Monica Trincado², Lilin Tan^{2

3}, Fernando Casas², Anja Kammer¹, Henrik Junge¹, Matthias Beller¹, Hansjörg Grützmacher^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Leibniz-Institut für Katalyse e. V., an der Universität Rostock, Albert-Einstein-Straße 29a, 18059, Rostock, Germany.
² Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zurich, 8093, Zurich, Switzerland.
³ Lehn Institute of Functional materials (LIFM), Sun Yat-Sen University, 510275, Guangzhou, China.

PMID: 30062851
DOI: 10.1002/cssc.201801072

Abstract

The ruthenium complex [RuH₂ (PPh₃ )₄ ] is a competent catalyst for the selective dehydrogenation of formic acid (FA) at low temperature. It tolerates water and shows excellent performance (TOF up to 36 000 h^-1 at 60 °C). Remarkably, no basic additives are necessary to obtain such high activity and the defined complex is stable for up to 120 days, making this system one of the most effective formic acid dehydrogenation catalysts known to date.

Keywords: dehydrogenation; formic acid; homogeneous catalysis; hydrogen; ruthenium.