NSF Award
9109179
Many pesticides are chiral--that is, their chemical structures exist as a pair of "hand" enantiomers. Generally, only one of the pair of enantiomers exhibits the desired biological activity. Despite mounting evidence that critical pesticides should be developed and marketed as single enantiomers, more than 90% of the synthetic chiral pesticides are marketed as racemic mixtures, which contain both enantiomers. The principal reason is because of the high cost and technical difficulty of preparing the enantiomerically pure chiral intermediates needed to prepare the chiral pesticide. The goal of this program is to develop a simple, cost- effective process to prepare enantiomerically pure (s)-m- phenoxybenzaldehyde cyanohydrin, an important chiral intermediate used in the synthesis of pyrethroid insecticides--a commercially important class of highly effective insecticides. In Phase I, we demonstrated the technical and economic feasibility of our approach, which is based on dual-membranes enzyme-reactor process. In this Phase II program, we plan to characterize and optimize the process and, through construction and operation of a bench-scale unit, generate the data necessary to commercialize the process with our probable Phase III sponsor, a major manufacturer of m-phenoxybenzaldehyde cyanohydrin.
