Controlled Catalytic Reduction in Synthesising Pure Tetrahydrocurcumin

Pd-Catalyzed hydrogenation process has been developed to synthesize tetrahydrocurcumin from synthetic curcumin. Use of diphenyl sulphide as catalyst poison is crucial for lowering the activity of the catalyst and thus reduces impurity formation. The process avoids column chromatography to achieve good quality tetrahydrocurcumin in cost effective manner. All the prepared compounds are characterized by FT-IR, 1H NMR, mass and HPLC techniques.