Esters, carboxylic acid reduction

Anhydrides are reduced with relative ease. McAlees and McCrindle 20) established the following increasing order of difficulty for various carbonyls acid chlorides > aldehydes, ketones > anhydrides > esters > carboxylic acids > amides. Reduction may proceed by 1,2-addilion of hydrogen or by cleavage of an oxygen-carbonyl bond. If 1,2-addition to the carbonyl occurs, as in the presence of strong protic acids over palladium, 1,1-diesters are formed by acylation 26). 

Reduction of Carboxylic Acids, Esters, and Anhydrides to Aldehydes ... 

Compared with aldehydes and ketones, carboxylic acids and their derivatives are less reactive toward reduction. Nevertheless, it is still possible to reduce various acid derivatives in aqueous conditions. Aromatic carboxylic acids, esters, amides, nitriles, and chlorides (and ketones and nitro compounds) were rapidly reduced by the Sml2-H20 system to the corresponding products at room temperature in good yields... 

On the other hand, it has been found that the electrochemical reduction is a very unique and useful tool in synthetic organic chemistry when magnesium is used as the material of the electrode. The cathodic reduction of 1,3-dienes with magnesium electrode gives very unique products, i.e. 3-cyclopentenol derivatives when it is carried out in the presence of a carboxylic acid ester (equation 23)17. 

Chiral 2,2-disubstituted cyclobutanones have been obtained by asymmetric rearrangement of chiral sulfinyl- 177,178 and sulfanylcyclopropanes.179 Using readily available cyclopropyl 4-tolyl (/ )-sulfoxide (l),180 the requisite sulfinylcyclopropanes 3 and 3 were obtained by a sequence of lithiation, reaction with carboxylic acid esters and stereoselective addition of Grignard reagents to the ketones 2 thus formed.178 The corresponding sulfanylcyclopropanes 4 and 4 resulted from a sequence of protection, reduction and deprotection.179... 

Hydrolysis of enol esters 0-83 Reduction of acyl halides 0-84 Reduction of carboxylic acids, esters, or anhydrides 0-85 Reduction of amides 0-95 Alkylation and hydrolysis of imines, alkylation of aldehydes 0-97 Alkylation and hydrolysis of dithi-anes... 

The (aminomethyl)thiophene-2-carboxylic acid isomers were prepared from the corresponding methylthiophene-2-carboxylic acid esters, as exemplified for the 3-(aminomethyl) isomer 79 (Scheme 22))66 The 4-(aminomethyl) isomer was prepared in the same way, but with a low yield for the bromination step (7%))66,111 For the 5-(aminomethyl) isomer the bromomethyl compound was reacted with sodium azide, followed by catalytic reduction)74 The corresponding furan and pyridine analogues were prepared similarly. 

Selective dehalogenation of halopyridines is an important industrial process for the same reason that reduction of carboxylic acids, esters, amides, and nitriles are also important. There is a dearth of selective oxidation technologies whether by conventional or electrochemical methods. Therefore, many intermediate oxidation stage products are made by overoxidation, i.e., overhalogenation, followed by selective reduction. 

Ruhlmann and co-workers found194-196 that carboxylic acid esters react under dimerisation to form acyloins if they are treated with sodium/TMS-Cl (142) in inert solvents. This Bouveault-Blanc-like synthesis has many parallels to the reductive silyl-ation (vide supra). 

Rabideau PW, Wetzeland DM, Young DM. Metal-ammonia ring reduction of aromatic carboxylic acid esters. J Org Chem 1984 49 1544-1549. 

Fig. 17.62. Two-step reduction of carboxylic acid esters to ethers. In the first step, a reduction via hydride transfer occurs and leads to a tetrahedral intermediate that is stable enough to be acylated to the (alpha))-acetoxyether A. The second step involves a so-called "ionic reduction"...

A reduction with triethylsilane, which is a pure SN1 reaction, is familiar from Figure 17.62, namely as the second step of a two-step reduction of a carboxylic acid ester to a simple ether via an oc-acetoxyether. 

Alkenols 219 like ( )-2-hexenol, ( )-2-octenol and ( )-2-nonenol were found in the smell of apples, in the aroma of potatoes, in aroma concentrates of mushrooms, and in Cucurbitacae 158). They are best obtained by reduction of the corresponding ( )-2-carboxylic acid esters 218 (Scheme 41). 

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