How to Develop Organometallic Catalytic Reactions in API Synthesis

20 October 2025 - 28 October 2025
Online Event
Spaces available

Event overview

Course tutors: Dr Vittorio Farina

If you have developed processes to prepare an API, you have certainly come across a number of catalytic reactions using transition metals, and you will have noticed that they can be challenging to reproduce. Have you seen cases in which a reaction was run a dozen time successfully in the lab but failed in the plant? If so, you are not alone. What makes these reactions so difficult to scale-up is that the catalysts are unstable and their presence cannot be monitored by the traditional methods, at least if the catalyst is used in very small amounts, which is always the case in a practical catalytic reaction. Therefore, one must resort to some level of kinetic analysis.

The course will go through the most basic situations in which simple kinetic analysis can identify the rate-determining step, the resting state of the catalyst, possible promoters or inhibitors of the reaction (including adventitious impurities like oxygen and water), and whether the catalyst decomposes appreciably. Are there off-cycle species depleting the catalytic cycle and slowing down the reaction appreciably? These notions are rather simple and do not require complex math but are not trivial.
This is information you will need in order to scale the optimized reaction with confidence:

In addition to ensuring robustness, kinetic analysis will help you optimize reactions when the results are not acceptable. Do you wish to reduce a side-product formation? Do you wish to prevent a decomposition reaction? Improve catalyst stability? Operate at lower temperature? Kinetic studies will help you address all these situations.

The course will include a presentation of case studies, taken both from the published literature and the tutor’s personal experience. These case studies will illustrate a number of ways in which a catalytic reaction can go wrong and how problems can be resolved. Finally, you will have the opportunity to apply your newly acquired knowledge to a series of problems in an open-discussion format.

 

We are delighted to provide this online course, it will be divided up into four sessions using an online platform.  Dates and times are as follows and set in UK, BST (British Summer Time):

Monday, October 20 | 2.00 – 5.00pm BST
Tuesday, October 21 | 2.00 – 5.00pm BST
Monday, October 27 |
2.00 – 5.00pm BST
Tuesday, October 28 |
2.00 – 5.00pm BST

Course Outline

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  • Brief introduction to the field of homogeneous transition metal catalysis.
  • Why are catalytic reactions so difficult to scale-up? What can go wrong.
  • Principles and application of high-throughput experimentation to catalysis development. Current practices, pitfalls and practical suggestions.
  • Computational tools as an aid to screening: an emerging field.
  • Introduction to kinetics. Why do we need to understand rate laws.
  • Simple kinetic laws and how to obtain them.
  • Pre-equilibrium and steady-state approximations. Saturation.
  • Use of precatalysts: the importance of understanding catalyst activation.
  • Catalyst inhibitors and catalyst decomposition processes.
  • Off-cycle species: how to detect them and minimize them.
  • Ligand inhibition.
  • How to do kinetic experiments in the lab and plot your data.
  • Homogeneous vs. heterogeneous mechanisms: ill-defined catalysts and their dangers.
  • How to develop the reaction: robustness studies.
  • Scale-up in batch or flow: some basic considerations.
  • Removing metal impurities.
  • The future: sustainable catalysis concepts.
  • Case studies: application of the principles discussed in this course in an open discussion format.

Benefits of Attending

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You will acquire key information to develop a catalytic reaction by integrating physical chemistry data into your synthetic work. After this course, you will be more proficient in designing screens and carrying out kinetic analysis, and this will allow you to solve at least 90% of your problems on your own. You will develop tools to optimize and make your reactions robust, so that you will be more successful in transferring them to the pilot plant and beyond.

Who Should Attend?

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The course aims to provide general tools which can be applied to any catalytic reaction to optimize the process and make it reproducible. It is aimed at advanced practitioners who are already familiar with all the most important transition-metal-catalysed reactions and would like to bring their knowledge to the next level of sophistication. The course is ideal for those who have used homogeneous catalysts before but would like to learn to optimize and scale up these reactions with more confidence.

Other Information

What's Included?

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The course fee includes:

  • Link to watch all four live sessions
  • Electronic version of the course manual*
  • Course certificate

For this on line course, there will be no recordings available and *the e reader manual is NOT printable or downloadable (due to copyright).  If you prefer a hard copy of the manual you will have the opportunity of purchasing a professionally printed hard copy during the booking process.

Certificate

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Upon completion of the course, participants can request a Certificate of Attendance.

Speical Offers

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1st delegate fee = Full price
2nd delegate fee = 5% off
3rd delegate fee = 10% off
4 or more delegate fees = 15% off

For more information on offers, do give us a call on  +44 (0) 1892 956 222

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How to Develop Organometallic Catalytic Reactions in API Synthesis

20 October 2025 - 28 October 2025
Online Event