The development of new methods for the recycling of chiral catalysts

This article discusses different methods for the recycling of chiral catalysts, including heterogenization of the soluble catalyst on an insoluble inorganic or organic support, membrane filtration of homogeneously soluble catalysts, precipitation, and two-phase systems. In principle, all the methods presented enable the repeated use of a chiral catalyst without loss of activity and/or enantioselectivity. Examples will be given from laboratory and industrial processes, incuding hydrogenations, ketone reductions, epoxidations, dihydroxylations, diethylzinc additions and Diels-Alder reactions catalyzed by chemocatalysts or biocatalysts. Different approaches for cyanation, hydrogenation and epoxidation are compared. Data from industrial processes include the production of metalochlor, the production of (-)-menthol and the production of L-tert-leucine.