MeshPL - 16-5-2015 at 08:05
Hello everybody!
When newbie hears about Kolbe electrolysis, he (at leadt me) imagines endless possibilities of ussing such a reaction. It can also be performed
without hard to find chemicals. But I assume it cannot be such a miracle.
So I have a few questions:
What are the limits?
Can I synthesise biphenyl from benzoic acid? Can I synthesise compounds with aldehyde/ketone/hydroxyl/aromatic/ether/halide/amine groups? What happens
to policarboxylic acids? Can I make cycles using Kolbe electrolysis?
I couldn't find answer anywhere on the Internet. Can anyone answear theese question?
I can imagine SO much compounds that can be synthesised from common chemicals: diamines (from aminoacids), quite long chain bicarboxylic acids (from
smaller-chained bicarboxylic acids), biphenyl, di/tetra/hexachloroethylene...
Also can I use ethanol or other organic compound as a solvent instead of water?
CuReUS - 16-5-2015 at 22:42
even I was very excited by the endless possibilities of kolbe's electrolysis at first.until I found out that the yield was 1% 
MeshPL - 16-5-2015 at 23:14
Really? What happend to the rest of substrates?
The remaining 99% turned into byproducts? Or into CO2 and H2O? Or didn't want to react?
1% seems low. What chemicals did you try to synthesise and from what?