Walter Reppe

Walter Julius Reppe (29 July 1892 in Göringen – 26 July 1969 in Heidelberg) was a German chemist. He is notable for his contributions to the chemistry of acetylene.

Walter Reppe began his study of the natural sciences University of Jena in 1911. Interrupted by the First World War, he obtained his doctorate in Munich in 1920.

In 1921, Reppe worked for BASF's main laboratory. From 1923, he worked on the catalytic dehydration of formamide to prussic acid in the indigo laboratory, developing this procedure for industrial use. In 1924, he left research for 10 years, only resuming it in 1934.

Reppe began his interest in acetylene in 1928. Acetylene is a gas which can take part in many chemical reactions. However, it is explosive and accidents often occurred. Because of this danger, small quantities of acetylene were used at a time, and always without high pressures. In fact, it was forbidden to compress acetylene over 1.5 bar at BASF.

To work with acetylene safely, Reppe designed special test tubes, the so-called "Reppe glasses" — stainless steel spheres with screw-type cap, which permitted high pressure experiments. The efforts ended finally with a large number of interrelated reactions, known as Reppe chemistry.

The high pressure reactions catalysed by heavy metal acetylides, especially copper acetylide, or metal carbonyls are called Reppe chemistry. Reactions can be classified into four large classes:

This simple synthesis was used to prepare acrylic acid derivatives for the production of acrylic glass.

If a competing ligand such as triphenylphosphine is present in sufficient proportion to occupy one coordination site, then room is left for only three acetylene molecules, and these come together to form benzene