This patent US 8,142,665 issued 4 days ago describes PTC technology for the destruction of methyl iodide by thiosulfate that is very similar to earlier technology patented for the destruction of methyl bromide by thiosulfate, issued to our sister company in US Patent 7,678,353 and in another Value Recovery Inc. patent using PTC which is US Patent 7,090,812.
A major goal of the earlier Value Recovery Inc patents is to destroy methyl bromide used in fumigation of fruit or in buildings contaminated with anthrax. Another goal was the general scrubbing of alkyl halides. One goal of the March 2012 patent shown in the figure is to convert volatile organic iodide into non-volatile ionic iodide to avoid release of iodine into the environment after a nuclear power plant (NPP) disaster. The volatile iodine released in an NPP disaster lodges in the thyroid gland and causes cancer, so it is essential to convert the iodine into a non-volatile form.
The advantage of both patents is that the methyl bromide or methyl iodide are very effectively reacted and decomposed into non-volatile inorganic ammonium bromide or iodide.
However, the inventors of the March 2012 patent chose Aliquat 336 as the phase-transfer catalyst, which can be unfortunate. This is because when the ionic iodide, which is a good nucleophile reacts with the methyl group of Aliquat 336 (with the trialkylamine Alamine 336 being a leaving group), it can re-form methyl iodide which is exactly the volatile compound that they are trying to prevent from being released.
If you or your company can benefit from achieving higher process performance in a shorter development time for this PTC reaction or any other reaction, by having access to the best PTC expertise available, NOW CONTACT Marc Halpern to inquire about using phase-transfer catalysis to achieve low-cost high-performance green chemistry. Remember, PTC excels in thousands of reactions in more than 30 reaction categories including strong base reactions, nucleophilic substitutions, oxidations and reductions
If you’re not sure if PTC can help your reaction, now fill out the PTC Project Evaluation Form and E-mail a scanned copy to Marc Halpern or send it by fax to Dr. Halpern at +1 856-222-1124. If your company does not have a secrecy agreement with PTC Organics Inc. already in place, please use “R-groups” instead of the exact chemical structures.
