Chapter 19 Metal ions associated to molecular sieve frameworks as catalytic sites for selective oxidation reactions

Publisher Summary Selective oxidation reactions are applied throughout the chemical industry to produce chemicals ranging from bulk scale oxygenates to pharmaceuticals. For obvious economical and environmental reasons, most bulk scale oxidation processes are catalytic and most employ air or oxygen as the oxidant. Catalytic methods are for the last two decades also gaining ground in fine chemicals production, albeit at a fairly slow pace, because it is often more difficult to justify the significant research efforts needed to find and develop them. This chapter discusses some interesting examples of selective oxidation catalysis with ion-exchanged systems, before going to what is the main theme of this chapter: oxidation catalysis by framework species in molecular sieves. Zeolite entrapped metal complexes with organic ligands, the so-called “ship-in-a-bottle” catalysts, are also described.