Mild Deoxygenation of Aromatic Ketones and Aldehydes over Pd/C Using Polymethylhydrosiloxane as the Reducing Agent

Herein, a practical and mild method for the deoxygenation of a wide range of benzylic aldehydes and ketones is described, which utilizes heterogeneous Pd/C as the catalyst together with the green hydride source, polymethylhydrosiloxane. The developed catalytic protocol is scalable and robust, as exemplified by the deoxygenation of ethyl vanillin, which was performed on a 30 mmol scale in an open‐to‐air setup using only 0.085 mol % Pd/C catalyst to furnish the corresponding deoxygenated product in 93 % yield within 3 hours at room temperature. Furthermore, the Pd/C catalyst was shown to be recyclable up to 6 times without any observable decrease in efficiency and it exhibited low metal leaching under the reaction conditions. O, Farewell! Heterogeneous Pd/C was found to be an efficient and recyclable catalyst for the title reaction. The robustness of the catalytic system was demonstrated by the high‐yielding reduction of ethyl vanillin, which was conducted on a 30 mmol scale in an open‐to‐air set‐up at room temperature.