Research progress on catalytic conversion of carbon dioxide in Lanzhou Chemical Institute

Recently, Li Yuehui’s team at the State Key Laboratory of Carbonyl Synthesis and Selective Oxidation, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, adopted a reductive cyanation strategy and used a nickel-triphosphine ligand catalyst system to achieve the catalytic cyanidation of organochlorines for the preparation of structures.
Diverse cyanide drugs and functional material molecules (intermediates)
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Carbon dioxide (CO2) has the advantages of being safe, non-toxic, cheap and easily available, and renewable
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At present, the proportion of CO2 resources that are recycled and used is extremely low, and the biggest constraint is the high cost of CO2 utilization
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Traditional CO2 conversion strategies mainly use organometallic compounds or high-energy compounds to capture CO2 to generate carbonyl compounds including carboxylic acids, ureas, carbonates and carbamates
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However, the types of CO2 conversion based on these strategies are very limited.
The fundamental reason is that CO2 is thermodynamically stable, and selective activation and conversion are relatively difficult
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The research was inspired by the urea cycle and the production process of nickel iron hydrogenase in life, using CO2 and NH3 as new cyanogen sources to replace the highly toxic CN- in traditional cyanidation reactions
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Taking into account the special requirements for the process and the high comprehensive cost of using highly toxic cyanide, this method shows good application potential and opens up a new direction for realizing non-cyanide industrial production in the future
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