The atom economic hydroamination, the addition of an amine to an alkene, gained more and more importance as an "eco-friendly" alternative in amine synthesis. In this work the homogeneous catalytic 1,4-hydroamination of an unsaturated delta-lactone the 2 -ethylidene-6-heptene-5-olide is investigated leading to a selective formation of an amino acid in a single step.The delta-lactone can be obtained by the telomerisation of the easily accessible 1,3-butadiene and the green house gas carbon dioxide. A new reactor concept is introduced which allows practical high-throughput catalyst screening with low costs. Variation of the metal precursors and the phosphorous ligands, optimisation of temperature and determinations of reaction rates leads to the catalyst system Al(OTf)(3)/DPEphos, which combines high activity (TOF = 846 h(-1)), no side products, low costs and low toxicity. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.