Platinum Metals Review - Volume 42, Issue 1, 1998

The number of road vehicles in the world is set to double in the next twenty years. Such rapid growth threatens to destroy the clean air in regions where air pollution has not been a problem up to now, and to reverse the improvements in air quality that have resulted from the use of catalytic converters to clean-up exhaust emissions in traffic congested areas. Thus, there is a compelling need to develop high efficiency passenger cars, free of emissions. One very promising option is the use of the fuel cell, which generates energy efficiently by converting hydrogen to steam. However, there are major drawbacks to carrying and using hydrogen on vehicles, including the complexities of re-fuelling and the absence of a so-called hydrogen economy. Hydrogen fuelling of fuel-cell powered cars must be the ultimate goal and the most practical near-term solution is to use an on-board fuel processor to generate hydrogen from a liquid fuel while driving, and such a processor, the Hotspot™, is described here.

Although many promising aspects of the chemistry of calix[4] arenes have been highlighted in recent years, relatively little attention has been paid to the co-ordination chemistry of these macrocyclic molecules. The present paper describes some recent developments made with platinum metal complexes attached to calix phosphine ligands, that is, calixarenes substituted with phosphino groups.

Studies on fullerene chemistry carried out in the Laboratory of Organometallic Stereochemistry at INEOS, Moscow, are briefly reported. These include work with platinum metals complexes, in particular, on novel methods of preparing η²if fullerene (C60 and C70) complexes of platinum, palladium, rhodium and iridium. A new approach is the use of mercury-platinum bimetallic compounds, R-Hg-PtL2-X, as a source of the PtL2 moiety to be transferred onto a (6:6) double bond in fullerenes. Bis(aryl)platinum(II) complexes can react similarly. Other products of this reaction are discussed. The first optically active organometallic fullerenes of the type CnM(+)DIOP, where n = 60 or 70, have also been prepared and the circular dichroism spectra investigated. In addition, the molecular structures for C60Pd(PPh3): and C60Pt(+)DIOP have been solved. Higher catalytic activity for the hydrogenation of a triple to a double bond has been observed with C60Pd(PPh3); adsorbed on porous carbon than with palladium/porous carbon.

The second Anglo-Dutch Symposium on Catalysis and Organometallic Chemistry was held on the 26th September 1997, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The symposium was attended by more man 80 participants from industry and universities in Britain and The Netherlands. A series of lectures was given on catalysis and its applications, and there were more than thirty poster presentations. This report highlights some aspects involving the platinum group metals.

The titanium-based electrode was invented some forty years ago. Since then it has been incorporated into a wide variety of industrial processes on a huge scale, principally in the chlor-alkali industry. Deriving from industrial, as opposed to academic, work, the saga of its commercial exploitation has involved patenting and secrecy on a massive scale. Despite there being numerous contributors to the overall technology, just a few individuals are holders of the hundreds of patents that were taken out. It is not intended that this article should contain comprehensive details of patents and other published literature, but rather be an attempt to portray, as accurately as possible, the excitement generated as the technology unfolded. However, it is bound to be inevitable, bearing in mind the complexities and the scope of commercial involvement, that not all readers will be satisfied with every detail, so apologies are offered in advance to those who may inadvertently feel themselves slighted.