I tried a Grignard reaction to make tert-butanol from acetone and methylmagnesium iodide. Needless to say,it failed.
First, 30ml of clear methyl iodide was added to a 3-neck flask with a condenser attached and equipped with a stir bar. Next,35ml of ether and 11.7
grams of magnesium was added,the mixture bubbled aggressively,and I had to replenish the ether two times. One the bubbling stopped, I added 35ml of
acetone to the reaction flask. After 22 minutes of stirring, I disassembled the setup and then poured the liquid-which was somewhat dark in color-
into a separate flask, with a few washings with hydrochloric acid. The flask with the liquid was then connected to a condenser for simple
distillation. Everything coming over below 80C was discarded.
The final yield of tert-butanol was around 7 grams.
Theoretical yield: 35 grams.
It seems that I utterly botched the synthesis. Is there any way to improve the amount of tert-butanol product in future runs?
gsd - 10-3-2016 at 17:37
1) IIRC Iodides are known to give poor yields in Grignard. The tendency with them is to form alkanes, in this case Ethane.
2) You need to work on your work-up. Washing a substrate containing tert-Butanol with HCl is not a good idea. Even dilute HCl reacts with it to form
Tert-Butyl Chloride.
1) IIRC Iodides are known to give poor yields in Grignard. The tendency with them is to form alkanes, in this case Ethane.
2) You need to work on your work-up. Washing a substrate containing tert-Butanol with HCl is not a good idea. Even dilute HCl reacts with it to form
Tert-Butyl Chloride.
gsd
1) In that case, what is the solubility of methyl bromide in ether? I used methyl iodide due to the fact that methyl bromide is a gas at room
temperature,so I thought that most of the MeBr would be lost once the methylmagnesium bromide started to form.
2) Will sulfuric acid be a better substitute for hydrochloric acid?UC235 - 10-3-2016 at 18:17
I think you threw out most of your product in washings. Also, do you have any verification that your product is clean/dry tert-butanol?
Your procedure seems very sloppy. Was the glassware flame or oven dried beforehand?
Why is the halide in the flask first? It should be added to the magnesium as a solution in ether and slowly. Was it dried with anything (if you made
it, to remove methanol) (or was it reagent)? If it was dried with sulfuric acid, was it distilled or otherwise treated to remove traces of sulfuric
acid? Why did you use an entire half of a mole on an untested procedure?
There is not anywhere near enough ether in your procedure. You should be using 150-200ml. Was the ether dried with anything beforehand? You state that
you had to replenish the ether. Were you not using a condenser at all? Methyl iodide boils at 42C. Ether boils at 35C. If the ether boiled off, so did
most of the halide.
You use slightly less than an equivalent of magnesium. This is probably okay since you'll lose some halide to Wurtz coupling, but if there isn't any
at all left at the end of the grignard formation you probably should have a bit more.
Was the acetone distilled prior to use? Was it dried with anything? Addition of RMgX to a carbonyl is strongly exothermic. It should be added slowly.
Next time, look up a procedure beforehand and follow it. Here is one I found by googling the words "methylmagnesium iodide orgsyn." http://www.orgsyn.org/demo.aspx?prep=CV6P0442 The procedure is in Part B. The nitrogen can be omitted without much reduction in yield. If using
THF, you need nitrogen/argon.
t-BuOH is both reactive with HCl as mentioned above as well as miscible with water. It forms a low-boiling azeotrope (79.9C) containing 88.3% tBuOH
and 11.7% H2O (the wikipedia azeotrope table lists this). I don't see any drying steps included in your procedure and ether cannot be counted to
exclude most of the water as I would expect the Et2O-tBuOH-acetone mixture to have considerably elevated solubility for water. Unless you used a very
efficient fractionating column, you probably discarded some in the forerun as well along with unreacted acetone. Acetone and tBuOH (azeotrope) are
only 23C apart. That is a very difficult separation.
Your stillpot residue may also have a considerable amount of water carried over with the ether beyond the azeotropic quantity.
If this is en-route to a catalyst for making potassium, I would suggest EtMgBr next time to make tert-amyl alcohol which has reduced solubility in
water and elevated boiling point relative to the other contents of the stillpot. Even better, use MEK instead of acetone and make 3-methyl-3-pentanol.
Or cyclohexanone.
[Edited on 11-3-2016 by UC235]chemrox - 10-3-2016 at 18:33
MeI is toxic as hell. Try it with MeBr which is available as a mineral analysis tool. Organic iodides don't make Grignards very easily as was
mentioned.Tsjerk - 10-3-2016 at 22:08
As long as you work dry and clean, iodides shouldn't be that much of a problem. Maybe use a small crystal of I2 to get the reaction started if it
doesn't by itself.
Use molar sieves and distill your CH3I prior to use. Leaving the glass in an oven at 150 degrees for an hour orso worked fine for me as I didn't have
a gas flame at the time. Also put a CaCl2 tube on top of your condensor. S.C. Wack - 11-3-2016 at 04:10
MeI is toxic as hell. Try it with MeBr which is available as a mineral analysis tool. Organic iodides don't make Grignards very easily as was
mentioned.
MeMgI is one of the easiest to prepare, and the bromide is not exactly nontoxic.
If this is en-route to a catalyst for making potassium, I would suggest EtMgBr next time to make tert-amyl alcohol which has reduced solubility in
water and elevated boiling point relative to the other contents of the stillpot. Even better, use MEK instead of acetone and make 3-methyl-3-pentanol.
Or cyclohexanone.
I thought MEK gives t-amyl alcohol? I'm using both acetone and MEK with MeMgI soon.
Found something useful...
SmellNoEvil - 11-3-2016 at 16:12
I looked up "prepchem tert butanol", and the first result was:
The procedure calls for using barium oxide as the drying agent for the T-Butanol, I think calcium chloride will be a suitable alternative though.
Tsjerk was right, I didn't dry the reagents much.
I'm planning a re-run sometime next week. Is there anything else that I should know before retrying the procedure besides better drying technique and
placing a CaCl2 tube on top of the condenser?
[Edited on 12-3-2016 by SmellNoEvil]gdflp - 11-3-2016 at 17:50
Calcium chloride is NOT a suitable drying agent for t-butanol. I will form a complex and will not serve to dry the solution. If you don't have any
barium oxide, I would use magnesium sulfate. To run Grignards, you need to make sure that the glassware is flame or oven dried immediately prior to
use, use a drying tube, use dried solvents and reactants, and I would recommend a crystal of iodine or a few drops of dry and ethanol free chloroform
or carbon tetrachloride to activate the magnesium. Much of this was mentioned above. Also, be sure that you run ice water through your condenser, it
was definitely much too hot if you lost all of your ether the first time you tried this.S.C. Wack - 11-3-2016 at 18:17
I think calcium chloride will be a suitable alternative though.
Calcium chloride is handy when you want an alcohol (among other things) removed as well. We have come some way since 1919, we have molecular sieves
now, and Perrin, Armarego et al.'s Purification of Laboratory Chemicals.
There are general recommendations for the Grignard to be aware of, that you are unaware of, such as very specific volumes of ether, which should total
like 500 ml at that scale. The acetone itself should be added in ether, and so on.
My scans Cumming, Vanino, and Cheronis all have the butyl alcohol from acetone, but no cookbook has been found that gives amyl alcohol from MEK,
presumably because the old preparation from amylene is much simpler, and modern books do triphenylmethanol and not much else.
PS An example of general recommendations, from the Organikum:
Preparation of the Grignard compounds
In a 1-litre three-necked flask with a dropping funnel, stirrer, and reflux condenser with calcium chloride tube, 0.5 mole of magnesium turnings is
covered with 50 ml of absolute ether and treated with about 1/20 of a total of 0.5 mole of alkyl or aryl halide with stirring. The start of the
reaction is shown by the occurrence of a slight turbidity and a rise in the temperature of the ether. If the reaction should not start, 0.5 ml of
bromine or a few drops of carbon tetrachloride are added to the reaction mixture, which is gently heated. After the reaction has started, the
remaining alkyl or aryl halide, dissolved in 125 ml of absolute ether, is added dropwise with further stirring in such a way that the ether boils
gently. If the reaction becomes too vigorous, the flask is cooled with water. Towards the end of the addition, the mixture is boiled gently on the
water bath until almost all the magnesium has dissolved (about 30 min.)
Reaction of Grignard compounds with aldehydes and ketones
0.4 mole of the carbonyl compound (but 0.2 mole of an ester, why?) in the same volume of absolute ether is stirred dropwise into the solution of the
Grignard reagent from 0.5 mole of halide. After the addition is complete, the mixture is heated on the water bath with stirring for another 2 hr, and
it is then cooled, hydrolysed by the addition of 50 g of crushed ice, and subsequently treated with just sufficient 50% concentrated hydrochloric
acid-water to dissolve the precipitate that has been formed. In the preparation of tertiary alcohols, dehydration may occur even under these
conditions. In such cases the hydrochloric acid is replaced by 50% aqueous ammonium chloride. The ethereal layer is separated off, the aqueous phase
is extracted twice more with ether, and the combined extracts are washed with saturated bisulphite solution, bicarbonate, and a little water. After
drying over sodium sulphate, the ether is distilled off and the residue is fractionated or recrystallized.
[Edited on 12-3-2016 by S.C. Wack]zed - 12-3-2016 at 16:45
SM Evil.
I am surprised you got a yield at all. Considering that your ran the procedure Bass Ackwards.
Dr. Wack's procedure is much more orthodox and likely to produce a much better yield.
"Grignard successes and failures"
Got a heading of that title, in the Organic Chemistry Thread. Worth a look.
Take some pointers from the veterans.
[Edited on 13-3-2016 by zed]
[Edited on 13-3-2016 by zed]Fantasma4500 - 2-4-2023 at 02:16
a thread for grignard for specifically tert-butyl alcohol? i guess this is the place to ask this question
im seeing that the acetone is added dropwise to the magnesium/halide, now the wikipedia prep for t-butyl alcohol calls for methylmagnesium chloride,
methyl chloride is very volatile, -40*C
could the methylmagnesium chloride perhaps be formed by gassing methyl chloride into acetone/magnesium? maybe using very fine magnesium powder to
compensate for the much shorter duration in which the methyl chloride gets to react
now, i intend to produce PIB, polyisobutylene from this, and turns out butyl rubber is 98% PIB and well- 2-4% isoprene- i presume its simply just a
really high molar weight which makes it more of an actual rubber than thesticky mess we know PIButylene as? could PIB/butyl rubber maybe be heated up
to decompose the polymer and lower molar mass?
edit: heating up polymers like polyethylene is what causes it to split into lower-boiling fractions which can be used as liquid fuels, lower boiling
point would imply lower molar weight. this can be repeated to decrease viscocity of the yielded liquid
[Edited on 2-4-2023 by Fantasma4500]DraconicAcid - 2-4-2023 at 07:02
(Apparently, you can use samarium(II) iodide in a Grignard-like reaction in which the alkyl halide and carbonyl compound can be added together. With
magnesium, I believe you absolutely must finish forming the Grignard reagent before adding the carbonyl or other compound.
