Energy density of fuel is an important issue for advanced aircrafts and spacecrafts. Exo-tetrahydrotricyclopentadiene (exo-THTCPD) is a promising high-energy density fuel candidate with many desirable properties, including high volumetric energy content (43.2 MJ/L), high density (1.04 g/mL) and low freezing point (<−40 °C). In this work, we demonstrated the first example of one-pot catalytic synthesis of exo-THTCPD directly from dicyclopentadiene (DCPD). The whole procedure was fulfilled in one-pot by three steps. First, tricyclopentadiene (TCPD) was prepared directly from the dissociation–recombination of DCPD at 200 °C. Then the reaction mixture (the majority is TCPD, mixed with small amount of DCPD and tetracyclopentadiene) was saturated using supported noble metal catalysts at 150 °C under 4.0 MPa H2. Finally, the hydrogenated mixture was treated by AlCl3-catalytic isomerization at 15 °C. Like most synthesis processes, fractional distillation was needed to obtain the final product of exo-THTCPD. Compared with previous routes, the new protocol has many advantages such as one-pot, high concentration, less solvents, low catalyst loading, short reaction time, etc, and therefore showed great potential for industrial applications.

In the presence of an easily prepared hydroxyapatite-supported gold catalyst, namely Au/HAP, various kinds of structurally diverse primary alcohols including benzylic and aliphatic ones, and amines involving aromatic and secondary ones could be converted into the corresponding amides in water with up to 99% yield. Meanwhile, on the basis of experimental observations and literatures, a plausible reaction pathway was described to elucidate the reaction mechanism.