ABSTRACT
Catalytic oxidation of hydrocarbons is the largest class of catalytic organic reactions in the petrochemical industry, because hydrocarbon derivatives containing oxygen and other heteroatoms are intermediates to practically all important plastics, synthetic rubber, chemical fibers, products of household industry, etc. The important driving force for substitution of the traditional oxidants by oxygen is the necessity of eliminating environmental pollution. The decreasing resources of hydrocarbons and continued deterioration of the environment necessitate urgent substitution of energy-consuming technologies, which produce large amounts of waste and pollution, by new, energy-saving, and waste-free processes of high selectivity. Molecular oxygen in its ground state has two unpaired electrons on the antibonding p-orbitals, the ground state is thus a triplet. Because of the rule of spin conservation, reactions between this triplet oxygen and organic molecules which are in the singlet state experience high activation energies.
