Carbonyl compounds, equilibrium constants

Hammen equation A correlation between the structure and reactivity in the side chain derivatives of aromatic compounds. Its derivation follows from many comparisons between rate constants for various reactions and the equilibrium constants for other reactions, or other functions of molecules which can be measured (e g. the i.r. carbonyl group stretching frequency). For example the dissociation constants of a series of para substituted (O2N —, MeO —, Cl —, etc.) benzoic acids correlate with the rate constant k for the alkaline hydrolysis of para substituted benzyl chlorides. If log Kq is plotted against log k, the data fall on a straight line. Similar results are obtained for meta substituted derivatives but not for orthosubstituted derivatives. 

Table 3. Equilibrium Constants for Formation of Cyanohydrins from Hydrogen Cyanide Plus Carbonyl Compounds ...

For most simple carbonyl compounds, the equilibrium constant for addition of water to the carbonyl group is unfavorable ... 

The equilibrium constants for addition of alcohols to carbonyl compounds to give hemiacetals or hemiketals show the same response to structural features as the hydration reaction. Equilibrium constants for addition of metiianoHb acetaldehyde in both water and chloroform solution are near 0.8 A/ . The comparable value for addition of water is about 0.02 The overall equilibrium constant for formation of the dimethyl acetal of... 

Other compounds with reactive methylene and methyl groups are completely analogous to the nitroalkanes. Compounds with ketonic carbonyl groups are the most important. Their simplest representatives, formaldehyde and acetone, were considered for many decades to be unreactive with diazonium ions until Allan and Podstata (1960) demonstrated that acetone does react. Its reactivity is much lower, however, than that of 2-nitropropane, as seen from the extremely low enolization equilibrium constant of acetone ( E = 0.9 x 10-7, Guthrie and Cullimore, 1979 Guthrie, 1979) and its low CH acidity (pK = 19.1 0.5, Guthrie et al., 1982). ... 

TABLE 1.2. Equilibrium constants for addition of nucleophiles to carbonyl compounds. ... 

Table 1.2 gives a representative sampling of eqnilibrinm constants for additions to varions types of carbonyl compounds. Notice that there are nnmerons gaps in the table. This means that mnch remains to be done in the stndy of carbonyl addition reactions. In trying to devise schemes for predicting the eqnilibrinm constants for snch reactions, the scarcity of experimental data is a serions handicap. There are many fewer equilibrium constants for additions to imines, and even fewer cases where... 

In this chapter, the definitions used by Perrin in his book on pA a prediction (which also includes a very convenient compilation of o values) will be used. One must be alert to the importance of the number of hydrogens directly attached to the carbonyl carbon several groups have pointed out that aldehydes and ketones give separate but parallel lines, with formaldehyde displaced by the same amount again. What this means is that given one equilibrium constant for an aldehyde (or ketone) one may estimate the equilibrium constant for other aldehydes (or ketones) from this value and p for the addition using a value from experiment, if available, or estimated if necessary. This assumes that there is no large difference in steric effects between the reference compound and the unknown of interest. 

What this implies is that given one equilibrium constant for addition of a nucleophile of known 7 to a carbonyl compound, one could estimate the equilibrium constant for addition of another nucleophile to the same carbonyl compound. This requires knowing the slope of the plot of log K versus y this slope is not very sensitive to the nature of the carbonyl compound, but it is at least known that A H2o/ MeOH depends on the electron-withdrawing power of the groups bonded to the carbonyl, and thus more information is needed to estimate an equilibrium constant for strongly electron-withdrawing substituents. From Ritchie s studies of nucleophile addition to trifluoroacetophenone," we can derive a slope for log K versus 7 of 0.42, distinctly less than the value of 1 for formaldehyde or simple benzaldehydes. 

Both these methods require equilibrium constants for the microscopic rate determining step, and a detailed mechanism for the reaction. The approaches can be illustrated by base and acid-catalyzed carbonyl hydration. For the base-catalyzed process, the most general mechanism is written as general base catalysis by hydroxide in the case of a relatively unreactive carbonyl compound, the proton transfer is probably complete at the transition state so that the reaction is in effect a simple addition of hydroxide. By MMT this is treated as a two-dimensional reaction proton transfer and C-0 bond formation, and requires two intrinsic barriers, for proton transfer and for C-0 bond formation. By NBT this is a three-dimensional reaction proton transfer, C-0 bond formation, and geometry change at carbon, and all three are taken as having no barrier. 

Simple carbonyl compounds, such as ketones and aldehydes, can hydrate by the addition of water, as shown in (1). The equilibrium constant for... 

In principle the velocity of dehydration could be measured if a physical rather than a chemical method were available for removing the unhydrated carbonyl compound at a rate comparable to its hydration. It was claimed by Bieber and Triimpler (1947a) that this could be achieved by the removal of formaldehyde in a rapid gas stream, the rate of which appeared to be dependent on the pH of the solution. However, attempts to repeat their experiments have proved unsuccessful moreover, although they give no experimental details, calculation in terms of known kinetic and equilibrium constants shows that for a 1-ml liquid sample a gas flow of at least 30 litres/min would be required to produce an appreciable perturbation of equilibrium conditions (Bell and Evans, 1966). It is thus clear that this method has no practical application, at least to formaldehyde solutions. 

The position of equilibrium, i.e. whether the carbonyl compound or the addition product is favoured, depends on the nature of the reagents. The equilibrium constant is often less than 1, so that the product is not favoured, and many simple hemiacetals and hemiketals are not sufficiently stable to be isolated. However, stable cyclic hemiacetals and hemiketals... 

Later, Smith and coworkers succeeded in measuring rate constants of the reaction of MeLi with a carbonyl compound at various reagent concentrations with a stopped-flow/rapid scan spectroscopic method, and demonstrated that the reaction also exhibited a fractional kinetic order . Thus, the reaction of 2,4-dimethyl-4 -methylmercaptobenzophenone with MeLi in diethyl ether at 25 °C showed one-fourth order in MeLi in the concentration range of MeLi between 3.9 mM and 480 mM (Figure 1). The rate constant was 200 7 M s . Under these conditions, the monomer was considered the reactive species that exists in equilibrium with the tetramer. Addition of LiBr or Lil depressed the reaction rate but did not change the kinetic order. The same... 

It is straightforward to calculate energies of hydration reactions as a function of the carbonyl compound and, once calibrated on the basis of available experimental data, use this as a criterion for selecting systems which might exist primarily as carbonyl compounds, primarily as carbonyl hydrates or anywhere in between. The disadvantage to such an approach (other than it requiring calculations on both the carbonyl compounds and their respective hydrates) is that it provides very little insight into the factors which influence the equilibrium. Another approach is to focus only on the carbonyl compounds (or only on the hydrates) and look for characteristics which correlate with the experimental equilibrium constants. This is the approach illustrated here. 

Basicity in the gas phase is measured by the proton affinity (PA) of the electron donor and in solution by the pAj,. A solution basicity scale for aldehydes and ketones based on hydrogen bond acceptor ability has also been established [186]. Nucleophilicity could be measured in a similar manner, in the gas phase by the affinity for a particular Lewis acid (e.g., BF3) and in solution by the equilibrium constant for the complexation reaction. In Table 8.1 are collected the available data for a number of oxygen systems. It is clear from the data in Table 8.1 that the basicities of ethers and carbonyl compounds, as measured by PA and p , are similar. However, the nucleophilicity, as measured by the BF3 affinity, of ethers is greater than that of carbonyl compounds, the latter values being depressed by steric interactions. 

Likewise, alcohols add readily to carbonyl compounds, as described in Section 15-4E. However, we must keep in mind the possibility that, whereas additions to carbonyl groups may be rapid, the equilibrium constants may be small because of the strength of the carbonyl bond. 

Exercise 16-10 One possible way of carrying out the cyanohydrin reaction would be to dispense with hydrogen cyanide and just use the carbonyl compound and sodium cyanide. Would the equilibrium constant for cyanohydrin formation be more... 

Similarly, the reaction of phosphorus trifluoride and iron pentacarbonyl 59) at elevated temperatures and pressures results in a mixture of compounds of the general formula Fe(CO)5 B(PF3)B, where n=0-5. All of these compounds were isolated from the reaction mixture by gas chromatography. However, it is stated that equilibrium was most probably not reached and thus no efforts were made to calculate equilibrium constants. Similar studies have been mentioned to be in progress with molybdenum carbonyls (5). 

In other aromatic carbonyl compounds, the relative binding strength is based mainly on steric considerations. For benzaldehydes (Entries 7 and 8),127,130 equilibrium constants are on the order of 104 for adduct formation and the borane binds syn to the sterically insignificant aldehyde proton. In the acetophenone adduct, the borane binds syn to the methyl group, but the equilibrium constant is an order of magnitude lower due to... 

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