Catalytic hydroxylation of benzene and cyclohexane using in situ generated hydrogen peroxide

H₂O₂ is considered an ideal "green" oxidant due to its high oxidizing ability and lack of toxic byproducts. An oxidation procedure that couples metallic palladium-catalyzed in situ H₂O₂ generation from dihydrogen and dioxygen with a second vanadium or iron catalyst that utilizes the hydrogen peroxide for the hydroxylation of benzene and cyclohexane was presented. The slow step in the overall reaction was the formation of usable H₂O₂, and the mechanism of hydroxylation by the second catalyst was not affected by the presence of metallic palladium. The reported procedure, which resembled monoxygenases, allowed the direct use of dioxygen in catalytic oxidations. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 227th ACS National Meeting (Anaheim, CA 3/28/2004-4/1/2004).