B. M. Ibrahim

The remarkable growth in the applications of organic polymers in the latter half of the twentieth century can mainly be attributed to their ease of preparation, and the useful mechanical properties and unique propensity for fabrication. Polymers containing metallic elements offer a wider range of novel characteristics and provide potential access to new processible functional polymeric materials and thus, study on the synthesis and prospective applications of metallopolymers have become an area of interest to polymer chemists.

As the current global environmental concerns have prompted regulations to reduce the level of aromatic compounds, particularly benzene and its derivatives in gasoline, hydroisomerisation of n-alkanes is becoming a major alternative for enhancing octane number. Series of solid acid catalysts comprising of Freidel crafts, zirconias, MoO3-based (MOB), chlorinated Al2O3, heteropoly acids and bifunctional zeolite based catalysts have been tested in this respect.