  This report provides a critical review on "Metal-Catalyzed Reduction of
N-Nitrosodimethylamine with Hydrogen in Water", by Davie et al.
N-nitrosodimethlamine (NDMA) is a contaminant in drinking and ground water
which is difficult to remove by conventional physical methods, such as air
stripping. Based on the reported robust capability of metal based powder shaped
catalysts in hydrogen reduction, several monometallic and bimetallic catalyst
are studied in this paper on the reduction of NDMA with hydrogen. Two kinds of
kinetics, metal weight normalized and surface area normalized, are compared
between each catalyst in terms of pseudo-first order reaction rate. Palladium,
copper enhanced palladium and nickel are found to be very efficient in NDMA
reduction, with half-lives on the order of hours per 10 mg/l catalyst metal.
Preliminary LC-MS data and carbon balance showed no intermediates. Finally, a
simple hydrogen and NMDA surface activated reaction mechanism is proposed by
the author for palladium and nickel.
