With just a little electricity, MIT researchers boost common catalytic reactions

Good news! Could be a breakthrough!

"A simple technique that uses small amounts of energy could boost the efficiency of some key chemical processing reactions, by up to a factor of 100,000, MIT researchers report. These reactions are at the heart of petrochemical processing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and many other industrial chemical processes. ...
The dramatically increased rates reported in the new study “have never been observed for reactions that don’t involve oxidation or reduction,” ...

The non-redox chemical reactions studied by the MIT team are catalyzed by acids. “... first type of catalyst you learn about is an acid catalyst  ... they’re super important in everything from processing petrochemical feedstocks to making commodity chemicals to doing transformations in pharmaceutical products. The list goes on and on.” ...

While there has typically been little interaction between electrochemical and thermochemical catalysis researchers ... “this study shows the community that there’s really a blurring of the line between the two, and that there is a huge opportunity in cross-fertilization between these two communities.” ..."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

Conventional Brønsted acids are among the oldest catalysts and are still the most effective. Because they operate by simple proton transfer, however, their accelerating effects are not easily amenable to improvement through structural modification. ... report that the application of an electrochemical potential can tilt protonation pre-equilibria and thereby accelerate an acid-catalyzed alcohol dehydration by up to 100,000-fold. The strategy was also effective in accelerating a Friedel-Crafts acylation, suggesting that it may have broad applicability to acid-catalyzed chemistry. ...

Abstract

Electric fields play a key role in enzymatic catalysis and can enhance reaction rates by 100,000-fold, but the same rate enhancements have yet to be achieved in thermochemical heterogeneous catalysis. In this work, we probe the influence of catalyst potential and interfacial electric fields on heterogeneous Brønsted acid catalysis. We observed that variations in applied potential of ~380 mV led to a 100,000-fold rate enhancement for 1-methylcyclopentanol dehydration, which was catalyzed by carbon-supported phosphotungstic acid. Mechanistic studies support a model in which the interfacial electrostatic potential drop drives quasi-equilibrated proton transfer to the adsorbed substrate prior to rate-limiting C–O bond cleavage. Large increases in rate with potential were also observed for the same reaction catalyzed by Ti/TiOyHx and for the Friedel Crafts acylation of anisole with acetic anhydride by carbon-supported phosphotungstic acid."

With just a little electricity, MIT researchers boost common catalytic reactions | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Applying a small voltage to a catalyst can increase the rates of reactions used in petrochemical processing, pharmaceutical manufacture, and many other processes.

Electrically driven proton transfer promotes Brønsted acid catalysis by orders of magnitude (no public access)