Supercritical Fluids; Opportunities in Heterogeneous Catalysis

The use of supercritical fluids (SCFs) in technology and research has been triggered by several unique features of these media. SCFs allow improvement of technical processes such as extraction, separation, particle formation and chemical reactions. However, it has been just in the last decades that SCFs have gained their importance in science and industrial applications, due to the relatively high pressures usually required when working with these media and the rigorous demands on the equipment used. Opportunities provided by the use of supercritical media in chemical reaction design have been the focus of several reviews(1-17). Here, we concentrate on a discussion of opportunities that SCFs provide in heterogeneous catalysis. First, we will consider the intrinsic properties of SCFs, then discuss the effect of these properties on chemical reactions, especially focusing on heterogeneously catalyzed reactions. Finally, we illustrate some of the opportunities of SCF applications in heterogeneously catalyzed reactions, using pertinent case studies.