[Moor54]

Hi,

im searching for literature containing information about the issue metnioned in the title. I have been searching on Scifinder and google but the results i got are very unsatisfying... I know its quite difficult to hydrogenate a ester selectivly and i got a lot more results when my search contained also homogeneous hydrogenation methods... but i cant imagine, there arent articles dealing with heterogeneous hydrogenation.

Do you have any tips or links to the appropriate literature?

Thanks for your help.

[phth]

That is porobably because you're searching for the wrong term.  Hydrogenation of esters isn't a terminology used, so the chemists saying something is related in scifinder search won't understand.  try searching for reductions.  It is very possibly to selectively hydrogenate an ester, how many steps required knowledge of the substrate.   if you cant find A-->C in scifinder don't forget to ignore searching for A-->B and B-->C.  use the refine function on scifinder.  You can also create keep me posted alerts.

[Moor54]

Thanks for your answer. Sure, there are a lot more paths in organic chemistry to reduce ester functions... but iam searching for the directly hydrogenation of esters with molecular hydrogen by heterogeneous catalysis for technical applications. And with this background it is very difficult to find correlated articles. All that i found are almost articles about the hydrogenation of fatty acids respectivly esters.

[orgopete]

Do a generic search for an ester to the product you want. That should give you a list of suited answers. Search that list with the reagents you want to use. (If you have access to REACCS, you should be able to do this quite easily.)

[zarhym]

Scifinder is a good tool. But I find it's not good for everything. I had some problem using it searching some well-established methods. In this case, there were too many informations poping out. It's very different to dig the right thing out by refining the results.

Personally, I'll recommend Myer's Chemistry 115 and organic-chemistry portal if you are searching some well-established methods. After you have an idea about what direction you are going to look into, you can use scifinder to get the exact literature you need.

[Enthalpy]

I don't understand.
Isn't the reaction from an ester to an alcohol a saponification? Are the multiple bonds a difficulty for that?
Why a hydrogenation?