School of Chemistry

John Blacker

Professor of Process Chemistry
Research section: Organic Chemistry

Contact details

Keywords

Industrial process development
Fine Chemical and pharmaceutical manufacture
Asymmetric catalysis
Chiral synthesis

Research interests

Development of chemical and process technologies to improve manufacturing efficiency. Examples include pharmaceutical route design, asymmetric transfer hydrogenation and dehydrogenation, asymmetric cyanation, biocatalysis, continuous flow processing.

Currently involved in setting-up The Institute of Process Research and Development (IPRD).

The Institute of Process Research and Development (IPRD) is a joint initiative by the Schools of Chemistry and Engineering at The University of Leeds. It is being formed to help the fine chemical industry access better chemical and process technology for making products more efficiently and cost effectively with less waste; to provide resources, expertise and advice, particularly in testing speculative but high value ideas on new routes and processes; to support high level training in process development.

The need for IPRD has arisen because financial and regulatory pressures are demanding more efficient processes to produce complex organic chemical products more cheaply, with higher more consistent quality and with less waste. In response to industry’s needs, government is calling public institutions to encourage closer collaboration between chemists, engineers, academics and industry.

IPRD will integrate the expertise of chemists, engineers, industrialists and academics. As IPRD develops it is planned to install a kilogramme scale-up lab to be used for test manufacturing and training.

Useful links

Full publication list   
Institute of Process Research and Development   
   

Selected publications

Ikariya, T., Blacker, A. J., Asymmetric Transfer Hydrogenation of Ketones with Bifunctional Transition Metal-Based Molecular Catalysts. Acc. Chem. Res., 40 (12), 1300–1308, 2007.

Blacker, A. J.; Stirling, M. J.; Page, M. I., Catalytic racemisation of chiral amines and application in dynamic kinetic resolution. Organic Process Research & Development 2007, 11, (3), 642-648.

Blacker, A.J. Enantioselective Transfer Hydrogenation in Handbook of Homogeneous Hydrogenation. Ed de Vries, J.G., Elsevier, C.J., Volume 1, Wiley VCH, 2007

Belokon, Y. N.; Blacker, A. J.; Carta, P.; Clutterbuck, L. A.; North, M., Synthetic and mechanistic studies on asymmetric cyanohydrin synthesis using a titanium(salen) bimetallic catalyst. Tetrahedron 2004, 60, (46), 10433-10447.