Provided herein are transition metal complexes that are useful in the acceptorless dehydrogenation of various substrates, including alkanes. Also provided are methods of dehydrogenating substrates to provide unsaturated products such as olefins.

Processes produce catalytically highly effective noble metal carboxylate compounds or their solutions that comprise A) a noble metal carboxylate, wherein the noble metal is selected from the group consisting of ruthenium, platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold, and B) at least one compound selected from the group consisting of oxalic acid, a salt of oxalic acid, a derivative of oxalic acid and a salt of the derivative of oxalic acid. The process digests the noble metal with alkaline earth peroxide to produce a digestion mass and dissolves the digestion mass in a carboxylic acid or a carboxylic acid diluted with a protic solvent to produce a resulting solution, whereby alkaline earth ions are separated off as salt of an oxalic acid or salt of oxalic acid derivatives, and the processes do not include any BaSO4 precipitation and filtration of barium sulphate.

Catalyst compositions for the conversion of aldehyde compounds and primary alcohol compounds to olefins are disclosed herein. Reactions include oxidative dehydroxymethylation processes and oxidative dehydroformylation methods, which are beneficially conducted in the presence of a sacrificial acceptor of H.sub.2 gas, such as N,N-dimethylacrylamide.

Disclosed are methods of forming an epimer or a dehydrated isomer of a pyranose monosaccharide or a pyranose saccharide residue in an oligosaccharide or a glycoside.

The alpha alkylation of an aldehyde with a polycyclic olefin followed by a ring opening step is presented in order to provide a compound of formula (I) in the form of any one of its stereoisomers or a mixture thereof and where in R represents a hydrogen atom or C.sub.1-8 linear alkyl group; R.sup.1, R.sup.2, R.sup.3, and R.sup.4 represent, when taken separately, independently of each other, a hydrogen atom or a C.sub.1-2 linear alkyl group or a C.sub.3-4 linear or branched alkyl group; or R.sup.2 and R.sup.3, when taken together, represent a C.sub.4-10 linear, branched or cyclic alkanediyl group and n is 1 or 2 is presented.

##STR00001##

Catalytic methods for synthesis of super linear alkenyl arenes and alkyl arenes are provided. The methods are capable of synthesizing super linear alkyl and alkenyl arenes from simple arene and olefin starting materials and with high selectivity for linear coupling. Methods are also provided for making a 2,6-dimethylnapthalene (DMN) or 2,6-methylethylnapthalene (MEN).

Methods of synthesizing and isolating facial-tris-homoleptic phenylpyridinato iridium (III) photocatalysts are disclosed. Also disclosed are methods of recovering excess 2-phenylpyridine ligands from said syntheses.

A hydroformylation catalyst having excellent catalytic activity and stability, a composition including the hydroformylation catalyst, and a method of preparing an aldehyde using the hydroformylation catalyst, wherein, when hydroformylation of an olefin compound is performed in the presence of the hydroformylation catalyst to prepare an aldehyde, the normal/iso (n/i) ratio of the prepared aldehyde is lowered, and synthesis gas yield is increased.

The present disclosure relates to a new catalytic process for the production of methanol from carbon dioxide, comprising: (1) the conversion of carbon dioxide and hydrogen to formic acid or formate salts; (2) converting the formic acid or formate salts to diformate esters of diols; (3) hydrogenating the diformate esters to methanol and diols. The diols produced from the hydrogenation reaction can be recovered and re-used to prepare the diformate esters.

The present invention relates to a catalyst composition for synthesis of heteroaromatic biaryls by a light-assisted decarboxylative carbon-carbon cross-coupling reaction, wherein the composition comprises (i) a palladium compound which is selected from a palladium salt or a palladium complex or a mixture thereof, (ii) at least one of the following compounds: a compound of Formula (I)

##STR00001## a compound of Formula (II)

##STR00002## an iridium complex comprising ligands L.sup.1, L.sup.2 and L.sup.3, wherein the ligands L.sup.1, L.sup.2 and L.sup.3 are selected, independently from each other, from a phenylpyridine and a bipyridine.