Pressurized Hot Water Extraction as Green Technology for Natural Products as Key Technology with Regard to Hydrodistillation and Solid-Liquid Extraction.

Hydrodistillation and solid-liquid extraction with organic solvents or supercritical CO are standard technologies for natural product manufacturing. Within this technology, portfolio pressurized hot water technology is ranked as a green, sustainable, resilient, kosher and halal manufacturing process. Essential for sustainability is energy integration for heating and cooling the auxiliary water as well as product concentration without evaporation but with the aid of low energy consuming ultra- and nanofiltration membrane technology.

Reducing copper use in the environment: the use of larixol and larixyl acetate to treat downy mildew caused by Plasmopara viticola in viticulture.

Background: Plant extracts might provide sustainable alternatives to copper fungicides, which are still widely used despite their unfavourable ecotoxicological profile. Larch bark extract and its constituents, larixyl acetate and larixol, have been shown to be effective against grapevine downy mildew (Plasmopara viticola) under semi-controlled conditions. The aim of this study was to reduce the gap between innovation and the registration of a marketable product, namely to develop scalable extraction processes and to evaluate and optimise the performance of larch extracts under different conditions.

Cobalt catalysis at the crossroads: cobalt-catalyzed Alder-ene reaction versus [2 + 2] cycloaddition.

The application of bidentate phosphine ligands in cobalt-catalyzed transformations of cyclic alkenes such as cyclopentene and cycloheptene with internal alkynes led to a chemoselective Alder-ene or a [2 + 2] cycloaddition reaction depending on the electronic nature of the alkyne and the bite angle of the ligand used.

Cobalt-catalyzed 1,4-hydrovinylation of styrenes and 1-aryl-1,3-butadienes.

The application of aryl-substituted starting materials such as styrene and 1-aryl-substituted 1,3-butadiene derivatives in the cobalt-catalyzed 1,4-hydrovinylation reaction has been investigated. The use of unsymmetrical alpha,omega-dienes in the hydrovinylation with 1-aryl-1,3-butadiene led chemoselectively to the 1:1 or the 1:2 adducts depending on the stoichiometry of the starting materials.

Cobalt-catalysed hydrovinylation as the key step in a short synthesis of moenocinol.

A regio- and chemoselective cobalt(I)-catalysed 1,4-hydrovinylation reaction is the key step in the straightforward and convergent synthesis of moenocinol, the aglycone of moenomycin A.