A paper from a group of researchers from Finland, Czech Republic, Germany and Russia -led by Martina Stekrova- has been published in the journal "Applied Catalysis A: General". Part of the data of this research was acquired at CLAESS beamline from the ALBA Synchrotron.

The α-pinene is an organic compound obtained from turpentine oil and represents a valuable material for the production of compounds used by the chemical industry. In particular, the α-pinene oxide can be converted into different substances such as flavors, fragrances and pharmaceutical compounds



Researchers have studied the isomerization process of α-pinene oxide over different catalysts. XANES and EXAFS spectra were recorded at beamline 22-CLAESS (and also at Hasylab) for analyzing a variety of Fe substrates heterogeneous catalysts in order to elucidate the influence of the support on the reactivity.

Figure 1.

 The image shows an EXAFS spectra (modulus of the Fourier- transformed, k2-weighted spectra) of samples under study compared with reference α -Fe

2

O

3

 spectrum.



Reference

:

 Isomerization of 

α

-pinene oxide using Fe-supported catalysts: Selective synthesis of campholenic aldehyde

. M. Stekrova, N. Kumar, A. Aho, I. Sinev, W. Grünert, J. Dahl, J. Roine, S.S. Arzumanov, P. Mäki-Arvela, D. Yu Murzin. Applied Catalysis A: General 470 (2014) 162-176