(530e) Understanding and Controlling Active Sites and Their Environments for Catalysis in the Liquid Phase

Many of the catalytic transformations involved in the conversion of chemicals and biomass-derived intermediates are carried out in the liquid phase or solvents that can significantly influence the rates, selectivities and the mechanisms that drive different catalytic transformation. The active sites and their local environments control catalytic transformations and can be significantly influenced by the presence of solvent. Solvents can act to stabilize or destabilize reaction intermediates and transition states and can be intimately involved in co-catalyzing reactions. In this talk, we examine the influence of the solvent structure and dynamics under reaction conditions and their influence on the free energy for catalytic as well as electrocatalytic transformations. We discuss the influence of the active sites, their environments and the role of solution in catalyzing acid catalyzed transformations in nanoporous materials and metal catalyzed reduction reactions in hydrogenation and electrocatalytic reduction systems.