On 19 June 2013, CatchBio researcher Henri van Kalkeren will defend his thesis 'An in situ reduction approach to organophosphorus catalysis' at the Radboud University Nijmegen.Many powerful and highly useful chemical processes rely heavily on the use of phosphorous-containing reagents. Unfortunately, such processes are characterized by the concomitant generation of a large amount of chemical waste, derived from phosphorous. The objective of this research was to reduce the waste of phosphorous, essential in such chemical reactions, by recycling of material during the chemical process.
A range of novel phosphorous reagents has been developed that can be readily reduced, thereby enabling hitherto unprecedented chemical transformations, with good regeneration of the starting reagents. In the long run this will contribute to cleaner and more sustainable chemical industrial processes.
Henri van Kalkeren did his PhD in the CatchBio project 'Selective catalytic substitution of hydroxyl groups by C- or N-nucleophiles', with Prof. Floris Rutjes and Dr Floris van Delft as project leaders. Van Kalkeren is now researching hybrid materials as a postdoc at the Ecole Supérieure de Chimie, Physique et Electronique (CPE) in Lyon.
>> more information on the RU website (in Dutch)