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The attachment of the alkene produces a transient reactive species, which then reacts with the alkyl halide to form the new C–C bond.

Both isomers of the alkene mixture are thus eventually consumed to make the same product.

Such approaches would reduce the energy intensity of alkene production by a factor of 2 or 3, until membranes become good enough to replace distillation entirely.

I started my independent research looking at alkene polymerization; in particular, the polymerization of norbornene into poly-norbornene, which is often used as a test substrate for catalysis.

Background Transition metal–catalyzed alkene metathesis has revolutionized organic synthesis during the last two decades, even though the commonly used catalysts do not provide kinetic control over the stereochemistry of the newly formed double bonds.