Dedicated to Professor Helmut Dorfel on the occasion of his 60th birthday
For the synthesis of organic compounds, reduction is an indispensible reaction type which is also widely used on an industrial scale. In industrial processes hydrogen is usually used as reducing agent, since strong reducing agents like alkali metals and hydrides can only be used to a limited extent for safety and economic reasons. Very economical reducing agents that are convenient to handle and have high potential application are hydrocarbons in presence of carbon. Hydrocarbon/carbon systems can be readily used instead of molecular hydrogen and expensive metal catalysts for the hydrogenation of compounds containing, for example, CC-, CO-, or NO-double bonds. Furthermore, these systems can be used for carrying out reductions which hitherto required strong reducing agents such as zinc, tin, alkali metals and hydrides. Especially suitable as economic sources of hydrogen are refinery products such as vacuum gas oil, fuel oil S or vacuum residue oil. Hydrocarbons are dehydrogenated to unsaturated systems and finally to carbon.