PTC dehydrochlorination was used in this patent to produce starting materials that were later subjected to reactions with HF. As described in the PTC Tip of the Month, organophilic quats are effective for dehydrohalogenation. In this case, the inventors used Aliquat 336 that has an average of 27 carbon atoms. They performed the reaction with less than 1 mole% PTC. One of the challenges in PTC applications that use Aliquat 336 is that it is “too soluble” in the organic reaction phase which means that it stays with the product. In this case, the product has a low enough boiling point that it is distilled away from the phase-transfer catalyst thereby achieving easy separation of the catalyst from the product.
If you want to benefit from the best expertise available to help improve your company’s process performance for a dehydrochlorination or any other PTC-strong base reaction, now contact Dr. Marc Halpern, the leading expert in industrial PTC-strong base applications.
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!).
