There is much interest about the properties of vanadium haloperoxidases, primarily because of the way the vanadium complexes at their active sites are able to catalyze the oxidation of halides and sulfides in the presence of peroxide. Models not only provide a way to study the way the vanadate-dependent haloperoxidases work in organisms, but they also provide new possibilities for use as biocatalysts in commercial chemical manufacturing. It has been found that model dioxovanadium(V) complexes can catalyze the oxidation of styrene in the presence of peroxide, suggesting that they could be used to catalyze the oxidation of other widely used monomers in industrial applications. This work hopes to demonstrate that these model dioxovanadium(V) complexes are in fact able to catalyze the oxidation of styrene, and then see if this is a novel characteristic of one particular complex, or if vanadium complexes can be created using different ligands that will also display this trait.
