Homogeneous Ruthenium catalyzed Hydrogenation of Furanoate Esters and Ether‐containing aliphatic Esters into primary Alcohols

Furanoate esters have been hydrogenated successfully with ruthenium complexes bearing tetradentate ligands in high yield, high selectivity and with a low catalyst loading. The catalysts and the reaction conditions described herein enabled the facile reduction of a variety of substituted 2- and 3-furanoate esters, with the latter being never reduced before under catalytic hydrogenation conditions. Furthermore, several well-defined ruthenium complexes were evaluated and compared, with bis-imino complexes being the most versatile in terms of reactivity and selectivity.