Heterogeneous catalyst materials offer the potential advantage of easy separation and recycling of catalysts and easy purification of the products. Homogeneous catalysts materials although affords the advantages of high conversion, selectivity and turn over frequency but lacks efficient recyclability of the costly metal catalysts. Hence heterogeneous catalysis is one of the emerging research areas to overcome the drawbacks of recyclability associated with homogeneous catalysis for many industrially required organic transformation using C1 gases like carbon mono oxide, carbon dioxide and methane etc. The need on the utilization of C1 gases is vertically growing due to continuous enhancement in their concentration in the atmosphere due to worldwide deforestation, industrialization and urbanization. Utilizing C1 gases are more promising than the controlling and reducing of their production. Using C1 gases as a chemical feedstock for the production of organic chemicals provides new, more efficient and economical routes to existing chemical intermediates producing industrial processes. Non-toxicity, abundant supply and cheapness of carbon dioxide are beneficial to use as a raw material leading to innovative routes to produce commodity chemicals. The main utilization of CO₂ is centred to be used as feedstock for environmentally-benign physical and chemical processes, for producing industrially useful chemicals. The homogeneously catalysed hydrogenation of CO₂ to formic acid has been extensively studied. However, this attractive reaction has not yet found industrial applications, owing to two main drawbacks: A simple and efficient recycling concept for the precious metal catalysts has not yet been developed. The presence of a base (in most work triethyl amine, NE_t3) is needed to shift the unfavorable equilibrium of the CO₂ hydrogenation. For hydrogenation of CO₂ to formic acid the Ru-, Rh- and Cu- hydrotalcite based heterogeneous catalyst are demonstrated by us for their effective performance in terms of conversion, selectivity and recycling. The reaction between olefinic double bond and the mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide (syn gas) leading to the formation of linear and branched aldehydes as primary products, known as hydroformylation or oxo reaction finds wide applications in the manufacturing of plasticizers, soap, detergents, solvents and various intermediates for pharmaceutical and perfumery chemicals. Hydroformylation is one of the most important reactions and currently being practiced homogeneously in the industries at commercial scale, however the system lacks efficient recyclability of the valuable catalysts. Hence heterogeneous hydroformylation with syngas (CO+ H₂) is one of the emerging research areas of last three decades to overcome the drawbacks of recyclability associated with homogeneous hydroformylation for the synthesis of aldehydes form olefins. In this regard the research has been progressed by heterogenization of homogeneous catalysts into a solid support. Condensation of aldehydes is an industrially important reaction and this reaction is practiced in industries under homogeneous conditions using harsh liquid bases like NaOH or KOH in more than stoichiometric amounts. Research has been directed towards the development of heterogeneous catalyst systems using solid soft base like hydrotalcite which has potential enough to play double role as support and base as well, thereby avoiding the use of harsh liquid bases. We have been successful in our efforts to develop heterogeneous catalyst system by heterogenizing Rh-complex based homogeneous catalyst using hexagonal mesoporous silica as a support for effective hydroformylation of olefins. The mesoporous support of this catalyst has performed as nanophase reactor as well. All these demonstrated catalysts by us have shown effective performance for hydrofornylation, aldol condensation, CO₂ hydrogenation, methane oxidation in terms of conversion, selectivity and recycling. A Rh-hydrotalcite based heterogeneous multifunctional catalyst is developed for carrying out three reactions viz. aldol condensation, hydroformylation and hydrogenation in single pot for the production of C₈ aldehydes and alcohol, 2-ethylhexanol. My talk will discuss the above advances made in the recent research and development concerns.

Dr. Shukla received B.Sc. (1975), M.Sc. (1977), Ph.D. (1981) degrees and PDF of CSIR (1981-83) from University of Allahabad, India and joined Inorganic Materials and Catalysis Division of CSIR- Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, Bhavnagar, India as research scientist since 1983. His specializations include catalyst materials, green organic transformations of O₂, CO₂, CO, H₂ and CH₄, high temperature-pressure material and catalysis. He is Life Member of National Academy of Sciences-India, Allahabad and Catalysis Society of -India , Madras. He was Member of Indian Reference Materials, Delhi and was Chairman (Alternate), Inorganic Materials Sectional Committee of Bureau of Indian Standard, Delhi. As Bilateral Exchange of Scientists awardees visited France (CNRS,1993) and Korea (KOSEF, 2002) for collaborative research on C-H and CO₂ respectively. Awarded brain pool scientist (2011) and researched in Korea on utilization of CO₂ as soft oxidant. Performed as faculty Professor for Ph.D. course,  of Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), and of Bhavnagar University. He is reviewer for reputed journals for materials and catalysis and Ph.D. examiner for Indian universities. He credited: 100 papers, 5 patents, 2 reviews, 3 books, 42 invited lectures: 19 international and 68 national conferences,17 students guidance and 20 research projects.