Copper Dioxygen Complexes for Multiphase Flows

Oxidation procedures with dioxygen belong to the most important applications in the industrial processing of substrates. For that purpose, the inert oxygen must first be coordinated by a complex and subsequently activated. In most cases the oxidation reactions occur in gas-liquid systems. A bubble column reactor represents a commonly used multiphase setup, which is examined in the focus of the priority program 1740 “Reactive Bubbly Flows”. In the course of the program, the complex mass transfer processes in multiphase environments were investigated in cooperation of engineers and chemists. In this thesis, copper complexes with N-donor ligands were synthesised, which were inspired by the oxygen activating enzyme tyrosinase. Dioxygen copper complexes based on bis(guanidine) ligands were developed as model reaction systems and evaluated, so that they could be applied in experimental multiphase setups together with the project partners. The presented model setups for the analysis of rising bubbles range from a two-metre high bubble column to various simplifications like a two-dimensional Hele-Shaw cell, a Taylor flow setup and a special NMR cell.