Methyl tributyl ammonium methyl sulfate, “MTBA MS” was reported this month in US Patent 10,370,767. It was used as a conducting salt in an electrochemical process for the reductive coupling of an aromatic vinyl compound (e.g., styrene) and a carbonyl compound (e.g., acetone).
MTBA MS is presumably made by the reaction of tributylamine with dimethylsulfate with no waste, especially if there is no need to hydrolyze the methylsulfate to hydrogen sulfate. One may speculate that MTBA hydrogen sulfate would be a good phase-transfer catalyst for PTC T-reactions and would likely be less expensive than tetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulfate.
In the 2-day PTC course “Industrial Phase-Transfer Catalysis“, we teach why methyl tributyl ammonium salts delier high performance for PTC T-Reactions. Now register here for the rare public PTC course in Prague.
About Marc Halpern
Dr. Halpern is founder and president of PTC Organics, Inc., the only company dedicated exclusively to developing low-cost high-performance green chemistry processes for the manufacture of organic chemicals using Phase Transfer Catalysis. Dr. Halpern has innovated PTC breakthroughs for pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, petrochemicals, monomers, polymers, flavors & fragrances, dyes & pigments and solvents. Dr. Halpern has provided PTC services on-site at more than 260 industrial process R&D departments in 37 countries and has helped chemical companies save > $200 million. Dr. Halpern co-authored five books including the best-selling “Phase-Transfer Catalysis: Fundamentals, Applications and Industrial Perspectives” and has presented the 2-day course “Practical Phase-Transfer Catalysis” at 50 locations in the US, Europe and Asia.
Dr. Halpern founded the journal “Industrial Phase-Transfer Catalysis” and “The PTC Tip of the Month” enjoyed by 2,100 qualified subscribers, now beyond 130 issues. In 2014, Dr. Halpern is celebrating his 30th year in the chemical industry, including serving as a process chemist at Dow Chemical, a supervisor of process chemistry at ICI, Director of R&D at Sybron Chemicals and founder and president of PTC Organics Inc. (15 years) and PTC Communications Inc. (20 years). Dr. Halpern also co-founded PTC Interface Inc. in 1989 and PTC Value Recovery Inc. in 1999. His academic breakthroughs include the PTC pKa Guidelines, the q-value for quat accessibility and he has achieved industrial PTC breakthroughs for a dozen strong base reactions as well as esterifications, transesterifications, epoxidations and chloromethylations plus contributed to more than 100 other industrial PTC process development projects.
Dr. Halpern has dedicated his adult life to his family and to phase-transfer catalysis (in that order!).
