Biochemical Processes and Metal Complexes’ Role as Catalysts

Abstract

In Chap. 2, some theoretical problems of catalysis with transition metal ions or complexes, oxidation of various organic substances with oxidizers such as oxygen and hydrogen peroxide, and also the mechanisms of these processes were considered. This provides the necessary basis for a search of possible fields of homogeneous catalysis with metal complexes’ practical use. It can be said without exaggeration that the advances reached in this field during the last 20 years made it possible, to a great degree, to consider in a new way both the processes proceeding in the world around us (atmosphere, water, and soil), and the processes within the sphere of human activity (in the chemical industry, pharmacology, foodstuffs production, biology, medicine, etc.). Having faced in the late 1920s the complex problems resulting from his own activities (environmental problems, chemical processes selectivity and optimization, agricultural problems, etc.), man was forced to appeal more and more to living nature, and in particular to evolutional chemistry. The great successes reached within the last few decades in the field of enzymatic chemistry, revealing the action mechanisms of a number of important enzymes, served as a good basis for numerous attempts on their modeling or analogous systems creation, although less efficient than natural enzymes, but more simple and convenient for practical use.