Alkane from alkynes

The use of stronger acid conditions provides somewhat better synthetic yields of alkanes from alkynes. A useful method consists of treatment of the substrate with a combination of triethylsilane, aluminum chloride, and excess hydrogen chloride in dichloromethane.146 Thus, treatment of phenylacetylene with 5 equivalents of triethylsilane and 0.2 equivalents of aluminum chloride in this way at room temperature yields 50% of ethylbenzene after 1.5 hours. Diphenylacetylene gives a 50% yield of bibenzyl when treated with 97 equivalents of triethylsilane and 2.7 equivalents of aluminum chloride after 2.8 hours. Even 1-hexyne gives a mixture of 44% n -hexane and 7% methylpentane of undisclosed structure when treated with 10 equivalents of triethylsilane and 0.5 equivalent of aluminum chloride for 0.5 hour.146... 

It should be noted that the selective reduction of phenylacetylene and diphenylacetylene to either the ds-alkene or the alkane was achieved using LiAlH4 in the presence of FeCk or NiCk as a catalyst [90, 91]. However, deuterolytic workup of the reaction mixtures gave deuterium incorporations <26%, indicating that these reagent systems are not well suited for the synthesis of vinyl- or alkylaluminum compounds from alkynes. 

Many cyclization reactions via formation of metallacycles from alkynes and alkenes are known. Formally these reactions can be considered as oxidative cyclization (coupling) involving oxidation of the central metals. Although confusing, they are also called the reductive cyclization, because alkynes and alkenes are reduced to alkenes and alkanes by the metallacycle formation. Three basic patterns for the intermolecular oxidative coupling to give the metallacyclopentane 94, metallacyclopentene 95 and metallacyclopentadiene 96 are known. (For simplicity only ethylene and acetylene are used. The reaction can be extended to substituted alkenes and alkynes too). Formation of these metallacycles is not a one-step process, and is understood by initial formation of an tj2 complex, or metallacyclopropene 99, followed by insertion of the alkyne or alkene to generate the metallacycles 94-96, 100 and 101-103 (Scheme 7.1). 

Describe simple chemical tests that can distinguish an alkane from an alkene or alkyne. 

You ve seen that a functional group is essentially any deviation from an alkane structure, either because the molecule has fewer hydrogen atoms than an alkane (alkenes, alkynes) or because it contains a collection of atoms that are not C and not H. There is a useful term for these different atoms heteroatoms. A hateroatom is any atom in an organic molecule other than C or H. 

The Oishi-Prausnitz modification, UNIFAC-FV, is currently the most accurate method available to predict solvent activities in polymers. Required for the Oishi-Prausnitz method are the densities of the pure solvent and pure polymer at the temperature of the mixture and the structure of the solvent and polymer. Molecules that can be constructed from the groups available in the UNIFAC method can be treated. At the present, groups are available to construct alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, aromatics, water, alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, esters, ethers, amines, carboxylic acids, chlorinated compounds, brominated compounds, and a few other groups for specific molecules. However, the Oishi-Prausnitz method has been tested only for the simplest of these structures, and these groups should be used with care. The procedure is described in more detail in Procedure 3C of this Handbook. 

Conjugation between the triple bond and the carbonyl function lowers the reduction potential considerably whereas alkyl substitution makes reduction more difficult (entries 1-5). A comparison between the half-wave potentials for reduction of PhC=CPh (1-69 V, vs. Hg pool) and // <7/t -PhCH=CHPh (1-65 V) substantiates the fact that, at least for this case, a likely product of reduction is more vulnerable to electroreduction than the starting material. In practice electrolyses in protic media aimed at producing alkene from alkyne usually proceed to give alkane. 

Alumina oxide 200 Alkanes, alkenes, alkynes and aromatic hydrocarbons from Cj to C o- C and C2 halocarbons... 

Shi et al. [161-164] studied a different reaction of an array of triphenylmethane and triarylmethane derivatives such as alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, phosphonates, phosphonic acids and esters, dialkylamines, triaryl acetic acid, triaryl acetonitriles, triaryl acetates, and tetraarylmethanes and published a review of their work [65]. Mainly from product studies they proposed the special case of di-Jt-methane and oxa-di-7u-methane reactions [165], viz. a,a-elimination gives a biaryl and the corresponding carbenes and operates in polar and nonpolar sol-... 

There are four subfamilies of hydrocarbons, known as alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, and aromatics. (These families will be discussed in detail in Chapters 4 and 5.) The alkane and aromatic families of hydrocarbons occur naturally the alkenes and alkynes are manmade. Both types of hydrocarbons are used to make other families of chemicals, known as hydrocarbon derivatives. Radicals of the hydrocarbon families are made by removing at least one hydrogen from the hydrocarbon and replacing it with a nonmetal other than carbon or hydrogen. Ten of these hydrocarbon derivatives will be discussed in detail in the appropriate chapters associated with then-major hazards alkyl halides, nitros, amines, ethers, peroxides, alcohols, ketones,... 

Alkynes are named by identifying the longest continuous chain containing the triple bond and modifying the ending of the name of the corresponding alkane from -ane to -yne, as shown in Sample Exercise 24.4. 

While all of the substrates discussed above are not shown in Fig. 2, the same analysis can be performed with all of them (alkynes, substituted methanes). One caveat that we encountered was that many of these substituted derivatives proved to be very stable. Loss of alkane from the n-pentyl hydride complex has a half-hfe of about an hour at 25°C. Methane loss from 3 has a half-life of about 5 h. Loss of benzene from 2, however, is extremely slow (months), and therefore, the rate of benzene reductive elimination at 25°C was determined by extrapolation from the rate at higher temperatures. The Eyring plot of hi( /T) vs. 1/T gave activation parameters for reductive elimination of benzene A// = 37.8 (1.1) kcal/mol and = 23 (3) e.u., which can be used to calculate the rate at other temperatures. As mentioned above, the substituted derivatives are much more stable. Reductive elimination of the alkynyl hydrides was examined at lOO C, as was the elimination of many of the substituted methyl derivatives. In these cases, the rate of benzene elimination was calculated from the Eyring parameters at the same temperature as that where the rate of reductive elimination was measured, so that the barriers could be directly compared as in Fig. 2. The determinatimi of AG° for all substrates allows Eq. 7 to be used to determine relative metal-carbon bond strengths for these compounds. Table 1 summarizes these data, giving A AG, AG°, and Drei(Rh-C) for all substrates. 

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