Acid-catalyzed Keto-enol

Problem 17.3 Compare the mechanisms for (a) base-catalyzed and (b) acid-catalyzed keto-enol tautomerism. 

Aldol condensations also take place under acidic conditions. The enol serves as a weak nucleophile to attack an activated (protonated) carbonyl group. As an example, consider the acid-catalyzed aldol condensation of acetaldehyde. The first step is formation of the enol by the acid-catalyzed keto-enol tautomerism, as discussed earlier. The enol attacks the protonated carbonyl of another acetaldehyde molecule. Loss of the enol proton gives the aldol product. 

The mechanism of the acid-catalyzed aldol reaction involves an initial acid-catalyzed keto-enol tautomerization to provide the enol form protonation of a second molecule on the carbonyl oxygen creates an electrophilic oxonium ion that is then attacked by the nucleophilic enol, followed by loss of a proton to give the j8-hydroxy aldehyde or ketone product. 

DRAWING THE MECHANISM OF ACID-CATALYZED KETO-ENOL TAUTOMERIZATION... 

Mechanism 20.1 describes the two steps by which acid-catalyzed keto-enol equilibration occurs the first is protonation of the carbonyl oxygen, the second is removal of a proton from the a carbon. 

MECHANISM FOR ACID-CATALYZED KETO-ENOL INTERCONVERSION... 

The study of prototropic tautomerization is intimately related to the study of proton transfer reactions. The study of the dynamics of proton transfer is as old as the study of reaction kinetics itself Indeed, the first reactions studied, that is, the inversion of sugar by Wilhehny in 1850 [65], involves a proton transfer as the elementary step in the reaction. In the first studies on the dynamics of tautomerization, primarily keto-enol tautomerization in acetone-like compounds were studied, which is a slow process involving a number of reaction steps of which the acid catalyzed keto-enol conversion was taken as the rate determining one [66]. In the past century, since 1910, nearly 2000 papers have been published on the kinetics of tautomerization, and in the first 60 years most of those were devoted to the ground-state reactions of the keto-enol type involving a C atom. Until the mid-1950s, only a handful of papers can be found this was obviously due to experimental hmitations. Two things are needed a method to start the reaction, and a method to follow it. In Dawson s experiments [66], the rate could be influenced by the amount of acid present, and the reaction could be followed because the enol produced... 

Drawing the Mechanism of Acid-Catalyzed Keto-Enol Tautomerization... 

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