Ongoing Projects

        Dr. Puneet Gupta, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, Feroze Gandhi College, Rae Bareli has been awarded a Research Project grant of Rs.2,50,000/- in Chemistry by the U.P. State Higher Education Council to support his research study entitled “Mechanistic study of Ruthenium (III) promoted oxidation of some aldoses and amino acids by bromate in aqueous alkaline medium”.

A brief introduction of the proposed research study:

      Recently considerable attention has been focused on the transition metal catalyzed reactions due to their involvement in many important industrial process such as hydrogenation, carbonylation reactions and low pressure polymerization of ethylene and propene. Ruthenium which belong to group VIII forms variety of complexes with different oxidation states ranging from -2 to +8 but +3, +4, +8 oxidation states of Ruthenium are more stable than other oxidation states of metal. Carbohydrates are the most abundant class of organic compounds found in living organisms. Various oxidation products of the redox reactions having reducing sugars as reductant are reported to have industrial and biological significance. Many reports are available in the recent literature on the kinetics of oxidation of amino acids by a variety of metals and non metal oxidant. However potassium bromate, which is found to smoothly oxidize a number of amino acids in acidic medium has not been used as an oxidant in alkaline medium. Potassium bromate has been earlier used as an oxidant in oxidation of various compounds both in acidic and alkaline media. The utility of Ruthenium(III) chloride as a non-toxic and homogeneous catalyst has been reported by several workers. This fact inspired Dr. Puneet Gupta to undertake the present research study.

      In the proposed investigation, the catalytic role of Ru(III) chloride with Potassium bromate as an oxidant would be studied for some aldoses and amino acids in aqueous alkaline medium in the temperature range of 30-50 °C. This would be done by iodometric estimation of unconsumed bromate at regular intervals of time. The kinetic data thus obtained would help in knowing the path along with the reaction proceeds.