Benzene, bromination determinations

To determine which halogen is present, take 1-2 ml. of the filtrate from the sodium fusion, and add dilute sulphuric acid until just acid to litmus. Add about 1 ml. of benzene and then about 1 ml. of chlorine water and shake. A yellowish-brown colour in the benzene indicates bromine, and a violet colour iodine. If neither colour appears, the halogen is chlorine. The result may be confirmed by testing the solubility of the silver halide (free from cyanide) in dilute ammonia solution silver chloride is readily soluble, whereas the bromide dissolves with difficulty, and the iodide not at all. 

Because the position of electrophilic attack on an aromatic nng is controlled by the direct ing effects of substituents already present the preparation of disubstituted aromatic com pounds requires that careful thought be given to the order of introduction of the two groups Compare the independent preparations of m bromoacetophenone and p bromoace tophenone from benzene Both syntheses require a Friedel-Crafts acylation step and a bromination step but the major product is determined by the order m which the two steps are carried out When the meta directing acetyl group is introduced first the final product IS m bromoacetophenone... 

In the section dealing with electrophilic attack at carbon some results on indazole homocyclic reactivity were presented nitration at position 5 (Section 4.04.2.1.4(ii)), sulfon-ation at position 7 (Section 4.04.2.1.4(iii)) and bromination at positions 5 and 7 (Section 4.04.2.1.4(v)). The orientation depends on the nature (cationic, neutral or anionic) of the indazole. Protonation, for instance, deactivates the heterocycle and directs the attack towards the fused benzene ring. A careful study of the nitration of indazoles at positions 2, 3, 5 or 7 has been published by Habraken (7UOC3084) who described the synthesis of several dinitroindazoles (5,7 5,6 3,5 3,6 3,4 3,7). The kinetics of the nitration of indazole to form the 5-nitro derivative have been determined (72JCS(P2)632). The rate profile at acidities below 90% sulfuric acid shows that the reaction involves the conjugate acid of indazole. 

Molecular bromine is believed to be the reactive brominating agent in uncatalyzed brominations. The brominations of benzene and toluene are first-order in both bromine and the aromatic substrate in trifluoroacetic acid solution, but the rate expressions become more complicated when these reactions take place in the presence of water. " The bromination of benzene in aqueous acetic acid exhibits a first-order dependence on bromine concentration when bromide ion is present. The observed rate is dependent on bromide ion concentration, decreasing with increasing bromide ion concentration. The detailed kinetics are consistent with a rate-determining formation of the n-complex when bromide ion concentration is low, but with a shift to reversible formation of the n-complex... 

De la Mare and Hilton198 measured the rates at 25 °C of bromination of benzene, benzoic acid, phthalic acid, 2-nitrobenzoic acid, trimethylanilinium perchlorate and nitrobenzene by hypobromous acid with sulphuric or perchloric acids as catalysts, in some cases in aqueous dioxan, in an attempt to discover if Br+ or H2OBr+ was the appropriate brominating species since the logarithm of the rates should then follow the acidity functions H0 or HR (J0) respectively. The results, however, were inconclusive and relative rates of bromination were determined (see Table 53). 

Finally, the brominations of mesitylene, 1,2,4,5-tetramethyl- and pentamethyl-benzene in chloroform (which is more polar than carbon tetrachloride) are first-order in bromine and iodine monobromide318, so that this is entirely consistent with the pattern developed above, i.e. the more polar the solvent and the more reactive the compound, the fewer the number of molecules of iodine monobromide that are involved in the rate-determining step. Measurements of rates between 25 and 42 °C revealed no significant trend owing to the variability of the rate coefficients determined at any temperature, but even so it is clear that there is no appreciable activation energy for these compounds, and there may have been temperature inversion for some of them. 

Subsequently, rate coefficients were determined for the zinc chloride-catalysed bromination of benzene, toluene, i-propyl-benzene, r-butylbenzene, xylenes, p-di-f-butylbenzene, mesitylene, 1,2,4-trimethyl-, sym-triethyl-, sym-tri-f-butyl-, 1,2,3,5-and 1,2,4,5-tetramethyl- and pentamethylbenzenes, all at 25.4 °C and in acetic acid, and it was shown that the reaction was inhibited by HBr.ZnCl2 which accumulates during the bromination and was considered to cause the first step of the reaction (formation of ArHBr2) to reverse320. The second-order coefficients for bromination of o-xylene at 25.0 °C were shown to be inversely dependent upon the hydrogen bromide concentration and the reversal of equilibrium (155)... 

Studies of the relative rates of the zinc chloride-catalysed bromination of alkyl-and halogeno-benzenes in nitromethane at 25 °C have lead to the suggestion that the rate-determining step of the reaction is formation of Ji-complex, since low substrate selectivity was found to be coupled with high (i.e. normal) positional selectivity323. Under some conditions (column 1 in Table 75) the low selectivity... 

Cyanide and thiocyanate anions in aqueous solution can be determined as cyanogen bromide after reaction with bromine [686]. The thiocyanate anion can be quantitatively determined in the presence of cyanide by adding an excess of formaldehyde solution to the sample, which converts the cyanide ion to the unreactive cyanohydrin. The detection limits for the cyanide and thiocyanate anions were less than 0.01 ppm with an electron-capture detector. Iodine in acid solution reacts with acetone to form monoiodoacetone, which can be detected at high sensitivity with an electron-capture detector [687]. The reaction is specific for iodine, iodide being determined after oxidation with iodate. The nitrate anion can be determined in aqueous solution after conversion to nitrobenzene by reaction with benzene in the presence of sulfuric acid [688,689]. The detection limit for the nitrate anion was less than 0.1 ppm. The nitrite anion can be determined after oxidation to nitrate with potassium permanganate. Nitrite can be determined directly by alkylation with an alkaline solution of pentafluorobenzyl bromide [690]. The yield of derivative was about 80t.with a detection limit of 0.46 ng in 0.1 ml of aqueous sample. Pentafluorobenzyl p-toluenesulfonate has been used to derivatize carboxylate and phenolate anions and to simultaneously derivatize bromide, iodide, cyanide, thiocyanate, nitrite, nitrate and sulfide in a two-phase system using tetrapentylammonium cWoride as a phase transfer catalyst [691]. Detection limits wer Hi the ppm range. 

As a 3-step mechanism, the electron-transfer paradigm provides a pair of discrete intermediates [D, A] and D+, A for the prior organization and the activation, respectively, of the donor and the acceptor. The quantitative evaluation of these intermediates would allow the overall second-order reaction (k2) to be determined. Although the presence of [D, A] does not necessarily imply its transformation to D+, A-, a large number and variety of donor/ acceptor couples showing transient charge-transfer absorptions associated with [D, A] have now been identified. In each case, the product can be predicted from the expected behavior of the individual ion radicals D+ and A-. Consider for example, the labile 1 1 benzene complex with bromine that has been isolated at low temperatures and characterized crystallographically (Chart 9).256... 

The influence of the OH-group on the reactivity of the benzene ring is of great importance. All substitution processes which are traced back to preliminary addition reactions take place much more easily with the phenols than with the hydrocarbons as far as possible the groups which enter occupy the o- and p-positions. A number of reactions illustrating this statement is discussed below and in subsequent parts of this book. It may be mentioned here that by the action of bromine water, o-o-p-tnbromophenol is at once precipitated from an aqueous solution of phenol. (Method for the quantitative determination of phenol.)... 

If the bromination of Cjq is carried out in either benzene or tetrachloromefhane, another bromide, CgoBrg, crystallizes in magenta plates in 54 and 92% yields respectively (Scheme 9.15) [93]. The structure of CjoBrg was also determined by single-crystal X-ray analysis. This bromide is isostructural to CfioCls [79]. 

Two excellent reviews <71AHC(13)235, 72IJS(C)(7)6l) have dealt with quantitative aspects of electrophilic substitution on thiophenes. Electrophilic substitution in the thiophene ring appears to proceed in most cases by a mechanism similar to that for the homocyclic benzene substrates. The first step involves the formation of a cr-complex, which is rate determining in most reactions in a few cases the decomposition of this intermediate may be rate determining. Evidence for the similarity of mechanism in the thiophene and benzene series stems from detailed kinetic studies. Thus in protodetritiation of thiophene derivatives in aqueous sulfuric and perchloric acids, a linear correlation between log k and —Ho has been established the slopes are very close to those reported for hydrogen exchanges in benzene derivatives. Likewise, the kinetic profile of the reaction of thiophene derivatives with bromine in acetic acid in the dark is the same as for bromination of benzene derivatives. The activation enthalpies and entropies for bromination of thiophene and mesitylene are very similar. 

Exercise 22-9 Devise an experimental test to determine whether the following addition-elimination mechanism for bromination of benzene actually takes place. 

In experiments of major importance, first published in 1950, Melander found that in the nitration and bromination of a number of benzene derivatives the tritium isotope effect (kHlkT) is not 10-20 as is to be expected if carbon-hydrogen bond breaking occurs in the rate-determining step, but rather is less than 1.3. The direct displacement mechanism was thus ruled out, and the two-step mechanism of Equation 7.70 with the first step rate-determining was implicated.157... 

Only data for substituents of the requisite symmetry are included in Fig. 19. These results adhere to the correlation with excellent precision. This observation confirms the general utility of the procedure. One caution is necessary. The p-value determined for non-catalytic bromina-tion of the monosubstituted compounds is — 12.1. The reaction parameter is decreased to — 8.7 for the bromination process with the polymethylbenzenes. The large variation in substituent effects is presumably the consequence of the greater overall reactivity of the alkylated benzenes. The dependence of p on the nature of the substrate is an important problem worthy of further attention. 

In contrast with chlorination, bromination of thiophene always gives substitution products exclusively, and no addition products have been isolated under a variety of experimental conditions.82 Lauer83 first studied the kinetics of the reaction of thiophene with molecular bromine however, the reported value for the rate relative to benzene (2 x 104) is not reliable, because of the uncorrected value of k for bromination of benzene (for a discussion of this point, see Marino72). Later, the rate of bromination of thiophene relative to benzene in acetic acid was determined as 1.9 x 109, by comparing the times necessary to achieve 10% reaction in the bromination of thiophene and mesitylene, under the same conditions.72... 

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