Reversible ketone hydrogenation and dehydrogenation for aqueous organic redox flow batteries

Aqueous redox flow batteries with organic active materials offer an environmentally benign, tunable, and safe route to large-scale energy storage. Development has been limited to a small palette of organics that are aqueous soluble and tend to display the necessary redox reversibility within the water stability window. We show how molecular engineering of fluorenone enables the alcohol electro-oxidation needed for reversible ketone hydrogenation and dehydrogenation at room temperature without the use of a catalyst. Flow batteries based on these fluorenone derivative anolytes operate efficiently and exhibit stable long-term cycling at ambient and mildly increased temperatures in a nondemanding environment. These results expand the palette to include reversible ketone to alcohol conversion but also suggest the potential for identifying other atypical organic redox couple candidates.

Theoretical study of the ligand effect on NHC–cobalt-catalyzed hydrogenation of ketones

Theoretical study of ketone hydrogenation revealed that the catalyst regeneration step is more sensitive to the ligand effect.

Ketone hydrogenation catalyzed by a new iron(ii)–PNN complex

A dearomatized Fe(ii)–hydride complex mediates the hydrogenation of enolizable ketones under very mild conditions. Deactivation occursviaintramolecular proton migration.