Proceedings of MATSUS Fall 2023 Conference (MATSUSFall23)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsus.2023.168
Publication date: 18th July 2023
Nitriles are interesting class of organic compounds included in a wide variety of natural products and industrial processes, that have been explored as potential Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHCs) due to their high hydrogen capacity and stability. Conventional methods for nitrile synthesis suffer from low atom economy, the use of toxic reagents, and limited selectivity. An alternative approach involves the oxidation of primary amines through organic electrosynthesis, which offers a safer and more environmentally friendly alternative by utilizing electric current and reducing hazardous solvents. Our research focuses on developing a green, selective, and gentle method for synthesizing nitriles in aqueous media, based on electrochemical procedures that allow eliminating the need for harsh reaction conditions. To that end, we have devised a facile alternative process for synthesizing electrodes through the electrodeposition of nickel on various supports for the electrooxidation of amines to nitriles.
In the electrooxidation of primary amines to nitriles with Ni based electrodes, hydrogen in produced at the cathode, whereas de amine is oxidized at the anode due to the redox par Ni2+/Ni3+ formed at the anode. To evaluate the effectiveness of different nickel-based electrodes, we conducted screening tests involving the electrooxidation of different aromatic and aliphatic primary amines. The electrodes tested include Ni foil (NiF), Ni45[1], Ni foam (NF), Ni electrodeposited on NF (NieNF), and Ni electrodeposited on a graphite pencil rod (NieGPR). Among these, the NieNF electrode demonstrated the most favorable results in terms of high yields (>95%) and substrate tolerance. Notably, our proposed electrodes exhibit a significant advantage over Ni/Se electrodes reported in the literature[2] , enabling a reduction of the reaction time for complete amine oxidation by half.
To sum up, the current project paves the way to produce both nitriles and H2 with low cost and high efficiency, thus grasping great potentials in the future energy conversion and storage technologies, sustainable environmental issues and beyond.
We thank project PID2020-116093RB-C41, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, projects IDIFEDER/2020/013 and PROMETEO/2020/02 funded by Generalitat Valenciana and project UJI-B2019-20 funded by University Jaume I.
The authors thank Servicio Central de Instrumentación Científica (SCIC) from Universitat Jaume I.
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