Σldritch - 4-5-2023 at 00:28
I foolishly bought way too much R-134A a while ago and I am not sure what to do with it all. Difficult to portion up and resell for obvious reasons. I
finally had a nice project idea for what to do with it just now so I thought I should write it down. Might as well be here so others can take part.
I'd love to hear your ideas too and get a sanity check as well. I'll post my initial idea as a reply below.
Hexafluoroacetylacetone ligand synthesis
Σldritch - 4-5-2023 at 01:00
My first idea (bad) idea was to make trifluoroacetic acid. Probably way too messy, can't do it where I am, my second (better) idea is the following:
R-134A should enable a simple DIY route to hexafluoroacetylacetone. This acid forms volatile complexes. Quite unusual and could be quite interesting
to investigate in itself. Even useful, perhaps. This reaction would be accomplished by simple double nucleophilic alkylation of a carbonate using
R-134A followed by hydrolysis. The former reaction should be possible because 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane is quite acidic and has been done previously
in the literature.
For a DIY-able reaction Ethylene Carbonate would be the electrophile of choice I think being simple to make from Urea and Ethylene Glycol (EG). EG
would be an interesting solvent for the reaction as well it being simple to prepare colloidal copper in it for use as a catalyst and it is easy to
dry. Perhaps you could even heat Sodium Hydroxide in EG to make Sodium Hydroxyethanoxide for use as a base seeing as EG has such a high boiling point.
Exact conditions and catalyst is of course the big question. Not sure copper is the way to go for catalyst here either.
