H
YDROGEN PEROXIDE is a familiar disinfectant
found in most people’s medicine cabinet. But H2O2’s bigger role is in industry, where it is used to bleach paper and as an oxidant to make commodity chemicals such as propylene oxide. However, there isn’t an ideal way to make bulk quantities of this key reagent. Researchers at Osaka University, in Japan, have now designed an approach for producing H2O2 that could become the ideal process chemists have been seeking (ACS Catal. 2014, DOI: 10.1021/cs401208c). Currently, the industry-leading anthraquinone process is an indirect, energy-intensive approach that requires sequential oxidation, distillation, and hydrogenation steps and has a high operating cost. Alternative metal-nanoparticle-catalyzed processes produce H2O2 directly and more selectively. But they require the combination of H2 and O2 gases, which can be hazardous in a large-scale process. Methods that use metal
LANXESS DROPS CEO AS PROFITS FALL LEADERSHIP: Management change may
precede restructuring and cost cutting
A
XEL C. HEITMANN, the head of the German
chemical maker Lanxess from the day it was created almost 10 years ago, will leave the firm at the end of this month. His surprise departure follows a recent decline in profits after a long period of growth. Lanxess was formed in 2004 when Bayer spun off what it saw as undesirable businesses in plastics, rubber, and specialty chemicals. From sales of about $8.5 billion, Lanxess has grown to be a $12 billion-plus company with a workforce of 17,500. Lanxess asserts that Heitmann’s imminent departure is “by mutual agreement.” But European media reports suggest otherwise. They speculate that Heitmann was pushed out because he rejected a call by the firm’s board to act decisively in the face of excess capacity and low
prices for synthetic rubber, a key business for Lanxess. The company declines to comment on the specifics but acknowledges that market pressures are behind the leadership change. “Lanxess is facing significant challenges, for example, in terms of market capacities and business portfolio,” says board chairman Rolf Stomberg. The board determined that it’s “the right time to hand over responsibility to a new leadership in order to overcome these challenges,” Stomberg adds. Heitmann will be replaced by Matthias Zachert, chief financial officer of the German pharmaceutical and chemical firm Merck KGaA. Zachert had been Lanxess’s CFO from 2004 to 2011. He is set to take up the reins at Lanxess by May 15. Installing Zachert “implies that the business environment remains rather delicate and competition is getting fiercer,” Martin Evans, a stock analyst at J.P. Morgan Cazenove, told clients in a report on the shakeup. Under Zachert, Lanxess can expect “a new orientation of the group’s portfolio and probably another program introducing cost-reducing measures,” Evans adds. Lanxess is not the only European chemical firm experiencing financial woes. DSM recently revealed weakness in its nutrition business for the fourth quarter of 2013. Also, Kemira has warned that its fourth-quarter profits will be lower than expected.—ALEX SCOTT
CEN.ACS.ORG
5
FEBRUARY 3, 2014
Graphitic carbon nitride is a selective photocatalyst for generating hydrogen peroxide. OH + O2 + H2O N
N N
N N
N
N N
N N
O + H2O2
LANXESS
design a highly selective catalytic process to make the industrial oxidant
Heitmann MERCK KGAA
CHEMICAL REAGENTS: Researchers
oxide photocatalysts to convert alcohols to H2O2 avoid H2, but they have low selectivity for H2O2. The Osaka University team, led by Yasuhiro Shiraishi, found that a graphitic carbon nitride photocatalyst produces H2O2 with 90% selectivity. The catalyst, made from inexpensive cyanamide, is a polymeric material consisting of layered sheets of triple-triazine units. When activated by visible light, it strips hydrogen from ethanol and then traps and protonates O2 to form H2O2 at room temperature. Shiraishi says that with further catalyst optimization the reaction won’t need ethanol but can rely on water as the hydrogen source, with the option of operating in sunlight without artificial lighting. “If achieved, that would truly be a green process for economical and safe H2O2 synthesis,” Shiraishi says. “And it could lead to a new strategy of using in situ generated H2O2 for sunlight-driven oxidations in organic synthesis.” The selectivity of the process is clearly a big Visible improvement for using photocatalysts to gener- light ate H2O2, says Graham J. Hutchings of Cardiff University, in Wales, whose group has developed highly selective metal nanoparticle catalysts for direct H2O2 production. The amount of H2O2 produced so far is still low, Hutchings notes, and the process is slower than catalytic approaches using H2. “It is a step forward and an elegant approach,” Hutchings adds. “But there is still much to do in terms of efficiencies.”—STEVE RITTER
ACS CATAL.
A BETTER ROUTE TO H2O2
Zachert
