Acetylenic tertiary alcohols, oxidation

Tertiary alcohols are resistant to oxidation. rcr -Butyl alcohol is frequently used as a solvent in oxidations. However, some tertiary alcohols are converted into tertiary hydroperoxides on treatment with hydrogen peroxide in sulfuric acid [177, 179]. Dimethylphenylcarbinol added to a mixture of 87% hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid at a temperature below 0 °C gives a 94% yield of cumyl hydroperoxide after 3.5 h [777]. Similarly, acetylenic alcohols with the tertiary hydroxyl group adjacent to the triple bonds are converted into the corresponding hydroperoxides in high yields [179] (equation 272). 

Aldol Additions to Ketones. Traditionally, cerium enolates or the Reformatsky-type reaction have been employed to achieve high-yielding aldol additions to enolizable ketones. In this regard, methyl trichlorosilyl ketene acetal provides a reliable alternative for the synthesis of tertiary -hydroxy esters. In the absence of a Lewis base promoter, the aldol additions of 1 to ketones are too slow to be synthetically useful. On the contrary, with pyridine A-oxide as catalyst, methyl trichlorosilyl ketene acetal reacts smoothly with nearly all classes of ketones (7) (Scheme 1). Good yields of the tertiary alcohol products (8) are obtained (eq 4), table 2 from aromatic (entries 1-2 and 4—6), hetereoaromatic (entry 3), olefinic (entries 7-8), acetylenic (entries 9-10), and aliphatic (entries 11-14) ketones. The only poorly performing substrate is 2-tetralone (7o), which affords a 45% yield of the addition product and returns 45% of unreacted starting material, most likely from competitive enolization. 

Three different types of reagents have been used for the alkylation of 1,3-dioxyacridones and subsequent construction of the fused dimethylpyran D ring of pyranoacridone alkaloids. l-Halo-3-methyl-2-butenes enable cyclization to a dihydrodimethylpyran ring, and dehydrogenation or oxidation has to take place in the course of the synthesis, in order to obtain the desired pyranoacridone. In contrast, the use of the tertiary alcoholic 3-hydroxyisovaleraldehyde dimethylacetal and of the acetylenic 3-chloro-3-methyl-l-butyne permit direct cyclization to the required dimethylpyran. 

The spectrum of applications of potassium permanganate is very broad. This reagent is used for dehydrogenative coupling [570], hydrox-ylates tertiary carbons to form hydroxy compounds [550,831], hydroxylates double bonds to form vicinal diols [707, 296, 555, 577], oxidizes alkenes to a-diketones [560, 567], cleaves double bonds to form carbonyl compounds [840, 842, 552] or carboxylic acids [765, 841, 843, 845, 852, 869, 872, 873, 874], and converts acetylenes into dicarbonyl compounds [848, 856, 864] or carboxylic acids [843, 864], Aromatic rings are degraded to carboxylic acids [575, 576], and side chains in aromatic compounds are oxidized to ketones [566, 577] or carboxylic acids [503, 878, 879, 880, 881, 882, 555]. Primary alcohols [884] and aldehydes [749, 868, 555] are converted into carboxylic acids, secondary alcohols into ketones [749, 839, 844, 863, 865, 886, 887], ketones into keto acids [555, 559, 590] or acids [559, 597], ethers into esters [555], and amines into amides [854, 555] or imines [557], Aromatic amines are oxidized to nitro compounds [755, 559, 592], aliphatic nitro compounds to ketones [562, 567], sulfides to sulfones [846], selenides to selenones [525], and iodo compounds to iodoso compounds [595]. 

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