Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Synthesizing 4-methylpyridine

CwisGons - 11-4-2023 at 21:37

Hello everyone. I will soon be attempting a big synthesis. but first I need a lot of 4-methylpyridine. I would rather not just buy it, and would find it more fun to try to synthesize it.

First thing I wanna try is the Hantzch pyridine synthesis. I would use ethyl 3-oxopropanoate, acetaldehyde, and ammonia to make the dihydropyridine, and then use acid to recover some ethanol and finally decarboxylate with basic copper carbonate.


The second involves making citrazinic acid with citric acid and urea in ethylene glycol and then using zinc/acetic acid to remove the hydroxyl groups and convert the carboxylate into a methyl group. The carboxylate to methyl group is based on this procedure: https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1135/cccc19480057

Also, I imagine that the dehydroxylation will likely work since zinc effectively dehydroxylates phenol into benzene, although I am unsure if the nitrogen will interfere with the dehydroxylation.

Do you think either will work? Is there another way to synthesize 4-methylpyridine I'm not thinking of?

Attachment: zincreducinghydroxyl.pdf (321kB)
This file has been downloaded 203 times