New Catalyst Design Solves a Decades-Old Chemical Challenge

Researchers have created an iron-based catalyst that controls methane’s extreme reactivity, opening the door for natural gas to serve as a sustainable feedstock for high-value chemicals, including pharmaceuticals.

Natural gas, one of the most plentiful energy resources on Earth, consists mainly of methane, ethane, and propane. Although it is commonly burned for power and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, researchers have long looked for ways to convert these stable hydrocarbons into useful chemicals instead. Their low reactivity has made this goal difficult, limiting natural gas as a sustainable starting point for chemical manufacturing.

A research group led by Martín Fañanás at the Centre for Research in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Materials (CiQUS) at the University of Santiago de Compostela has now introduced a method that overcomes this barrier. Their approach converts methane and other components of natural gas into flexible chemical “building blocks” that can be used to create high-value products, including pharmaceuticals. The work, published in Science Advances, marks an important step toward a more efficient and environmentally responsible chemical industry.

In a key demonstration, the CiQUS team produced the bioactive compound dimestrol, a non-steroidal estrogen used in hormone therapy, directly from methane. This milestone shows how their technique can generate complex and valuable molecules from a simple and inexpensive resource.

Taming Free Radicals to Unlock New Chemical Pathways

The researchers focused their approach on a reaction known as allylation, which adds a small chemical “handle” (an allyl group) to the gas molecule. This added group acts as a flexible anchor that allows many different products to be built in later steps, including pharmaceutical ingredients and common industrial chemicals. Until now, a major obstacle was that the catalytic system often generated unwanted chlorinated byproducts, which disrupted the entire process.

To overcome this obstacle, the team engineered a tailor-made supramolecular catalyst. “The core of this breakthrough lies in designing a catalyst based on a tetrachloroferrate anion stabilized by collidinium cations, which effectively modulates the reactivity of the radical species generated in the reaction medium,” explains Prof. Fañanás. “The formation of an intricate network of hydrogen bonds around the iron atom sustains the photocatalytic reactivity required to activate the alkane, while simultaneously suppressing the catalyst’s tendency to undergo competing chlorination reactions. This creates an optimal environment for the selective allylation reaction to proceed.”

Beyond its effectiveness, the method stands out for its sustainability. It uses iron a cheap, abundant, and far less toxic metal than the precious metals typically used in catalysis and operates under mild temperature and pressure conditions, powered by LED light. This significantly reduces both environmental impact and energy costs.

This work is part of a broader research line funded by the European Research Council (ERC), focused on upgrading the main components of natural gas. In a complementary advance published in Cell Reports Physical Science, the same team presented a method to directly couple these gases with acid chlorides, yielding industrially relevant ketones in a single step. Both studies, based on photocatalytic strategies, position CiQUS as a leader in developing innovative chemical solutions to harness abundant raw materials.

Transforming Natural Gas into Versatile Chemical Intermediates

The ability to convert natural gas into versatile chemical intermediates opens up new possibilities for industry, laying the foundation to gradually replace petrochemical sources with more sustainable alternatives.

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