Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Possible route to Toluene from Xylene

DFliyerz - 13-5-2016 at 07:05

In many places, people can get mixed xylenes easily but can't get toluene. While looking around, I found some information that may lead to a route from xylenes to toluene. In this prep, nitric acid is used under fairly mild conditions to oxidize o-xylene to o-toluic (methylbenzoic) acid. Assuming that a similar procedure could be used on the other xylene isomers, and that toluic acid could be decarboxylated as a salt or with some other base, this could provide a fairly inexpensive route to toluene from xylene.

macckone - 13-5-2016 at 18:21

You can definitely oxidize xylene to mixed carboxylic acids and then decarboxylate. You can also get toluene from gasoline via distillation. You can also use disproportionation with aluminum chloride to yield benzene, toluene and mesitylene. Many fuel injector cleaners and octane boosters are very high in toluene. If you can't distill gasoline, chances are you will have a problem with the more complex reactions.

Deathunter88 - 13-5-2016 at 21:26

Quote: Originally posted by macckone  
You can definitely oxidize xylene to mixed carboxylic acids and then decarboxylate. You can also get toluene from gasoline via distillation. You can also use disproportionation with aluminum chloride to yield benzene, toluene and mesitylene. Many fuel injector cleaners and octane boosters are very high in toluene. If you can't distill gasoline, chances are you will have a problem with the more complex reactions.


I don't know about you, but distilling 10 liters of gasoline just to get 500ml of toluene doesn't sound very fun. (concentration of toluene in gasoline is about 5%) It's also probably very hard to get clean separation due to the other junk in gasoline.