The Industrial Phase-Transfer Catalysis Experts

PTC Tip of the Month E-Newsletter

PTC Tip of the Month - July 2013

Quat Tribromide

By Marc Halpern, the leading expert in industrial phase-transfer catalysis.

Quat tribromides are used for bromination of aromatic rings and activated alkyl groups. These are not PTC reactions (yet!) because they use stoichiometric quantities of quat salt, but we still think that these brominations are of interest to our audience.

The figure shows the bromination of the alpha position of an acetyl group that was described in a patent that issued yesterday. The PT Catalyst of the Month below shows the use of another quat tribromide in a patent from earlier this month.

tribromidealphatoacetyl

Next month, we will show the use of a quat tribromide in catalytic quantity for esterification by dehydration.

If your company can benefit from achieving higher process performance in a shorter development time by having access to the best PTC expertise available, now contact Marc Halpern by E-mail or by phone at + 1 856-222-1146 to inquire about using phase-transfer catalysis to achieve low-cost high-performance green chemistry.

If you’re not sure if PTC can help your reaction, now fill out the form shown at http://phasetransfer.com/projectform.pdf and send it to Marc Halpern by fax at +1 856-222-1124 or by E-mail of a scanned copy. If we do not have a secrecy agreement already in place, please use “R-groups” instead of the exact chemical structures.

About Marc Halpern

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!).

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