More sustainable process for alcohol oxidation

Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, have developed a new method that makes the oxidation of alcohols easier to control and more sustainable. Alcohol oxidation is important both for synthetic chemistry and sustainable energy applications. Thermal processes are usually used for this purpose; in other words, the activation energy that must be overcome for the reaction is supplied in the form of heat, and oxidation takes place using oxygen under pressure.