Squall181
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Methyl Tert-Butyl Ether/ Ether Cleavage
So I have been working on converting methyl Tert-butyl ether(MTBE) to t-butanol, but it seems I have had no success. To be honest this was really my
first go at organic synthesis and I am sure I made plenty of mistakes.
The final product does not seem to react with HCl to form T-butyl chloride and it is not a solid at room temp.
The quick version of what I attempted to do is, React MTBE with HCl to get t-butyl chloride, Hydrolyze the T-butly chloride and get T-butanol, distill
T-butanol from reaction mixture(water/acetone)
From this I have a couple of questions:
When cleaving tertiary ethers with HCl should the mixture be allowed to reflux or is leaving the mixture to react at room temp for >12 hours
sufficient?
Can t-butyl chloride hydrolyze when being washed to remove residual HCl?
I've also read that ether's can be cleaved with dilute sulfuric acid, but I was unable to find a procedure for such a reaction, If anyone knows a
reference to such a procedure please share.
Any thoughts or ideas on how to refine this procedure or come up with a new one altogether.
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Nicodem
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Please, search the literature and the forum. There is a discussion on this topic and the relevant references for the articles you need were posted
there:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=11575
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Squall181
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Sorry, I should have posted in the existing thread, Nicodem could you move this over to the relevant thread.
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