Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Terms of Use

© 2023 Richard A. Cardrino. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. For all other uses, please contact the copyright holder.

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Chemistry & Biochemistry Department

First Advisor

Christopher R. Graves

Abstract

The current industrial syngas process for transforming methane to methanol is an indirect process that requires the initial oxidation of methane to carbon monoxide with a subsequent reduction to form methanol under high pressure and temperature conditions. An alternative green chemical process is desirable, especially one that directly oxidizes gaseous methane to liquid methanol under mild conditions with an environmentally benign oxidant, such as dioxygen. The current study investigates the synthesis of a novel palladium complex with activated methane and the selective oxidation of this complex resulting in the liberation of methanol under more ambient conditions, a model system for the intermediate oxidation and functionalization steps of selective conversion of methane to methanol. A kinetic investigation was carried out to elucidate a mechanism for the selective oxidation culminating in a kinetic rate law and a proposed radical mediated reaction mechanism.

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