Tailored catalysis for the F&F industry

Abstract

Over the past decades, scientists at Firmenich have focused their efforts on continuously improving chemical transformations for the production of F&F ingredients in order to make them safer, cleaner, more efficient and consequently cost effective, through the implementation of the Green Chemistry principles. Numerous examples of innovant catalytic technologies could be cited, particularly in the field of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalytic hydrogenation. Nevertheless, we chose here to provide a rare insight into the industrial application of some very useful and atom-economic carbon-carbon bond forming reactions. We selected two examples among others as a good illustration of how catalysis makes the difference compared to conventional stoichiometric approaches. The first example deals with catalyzed cross-aldol condensation and the second example concerns catalysis of cross-coupling reactions.