Catalysis aluminium halide

The most valuable and comprehensive kinetic studies of alkylation have been carried out by Brown et al. The first of these studies concerned benzylation of aromatics with 3,4-dichloro- and 4-nitro-benzyl chlorides (these being chosen to give convenient reaction rates) with catalysis by aluminium chloride in nitrobenzene solvent340. Reactions were complicated by dialkylation which was especially troublesome at low aromatic concentrations, but it proved possible to obtain approximately third-order kinetics, the process being first-order in halide and catalyst and roughly first-order in aromatic this is shown by the data relating to alkylation of benzene given in Table 77, where the first-order rate coefficients k1 are calculated with respect to the concentration of alkyl chloride and the second-order coefficients k2 are calculated with respect to the products of the... 

The mechanism of initiation of cationic polymerisations by metal halides was clarified and systematized to some extent by the discovery of the phenomenon of co-catalysis or co-initiation. But, whereas there was, by the mid-1960s, good evidence that at any rate in many systems the halides of boron, titanium, and tin required a co-initiator, the position with regard to the best-known and most popular initiator, and the one which was of greatest economic significance, aluminium chloride, remained obscure. Of the vast number of published experiments on the system, aluminium chloride + isobutylene, hardly any could provide evidence concerning the initiation reaction, because they were almost exclusively concerned with measurements of yields and degree of polymerisation (DP). 

Carboxylic acid anhydrides or halides normally require the presence of a Lewis acid (often boron trifluoride) for Friedel-Crafts acylation of furans, though trifluoroacetic anhydride will react alone. Aluminium-chloride-catalysed acetylation of furan proceeds 7 x lO times faster at the a-position than at the P-position. 3-Alkyl-furans substitute mainly at C-2 2,5-dialkyl-furans can be acylated at a P-position, but generally with more difficulty. 3-Bromofuran is efficiently acetylated at C-2 using aluminium chloride catalysis. ... 

Hydrolysis of complexes of the type MFe is catalysed not only by acid but also by a series of metal ions. Kinetic data have been obtained for catalysis of hydrolysis of PFe, AsFg", AsFgCOH)- and also of BF4-, by beryllium(ii), aluminium(iii), zirconium(iv), and thorium(rv). Again this may be seen as an extension of studies on cation catalysis of hydrolysis of transition-metal complexes, e.g. the numerous studies of mercury(ii)-catalysed aquations of cobalt(iii)-ammine-halide complexes, or the recent study of metal ion catalysis of chloro(ethylenediaminetriacetato)-cobaltate(m). ... 

Lewis acids catalyse the cyclocondensation of acid chlorides and aldehydes to give lactones (83) and (84). Aluminium chloride catalysis favours the 1 1 product (84), via a ketene pathway, while the large ring is the predominant product using e.g. TiCl2(OPr )2, where aryl halide enolates are implicated as intermediates. 

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