Focus On Industrial Addition Reactions

Several addition reactions have been or are currently used on a large scale in industrial chemical plants. For example, an older method for the preparation of ethylene oxide employed the addition of chlorine to ethylene in water to form ethylene chlorohydrin or 2-chloroethanol. (In industry, ethene is almost always called ethylene.) Treatment of the chlorohydrin with calcium hydroxide results in the formation of ethylene oxide, which is an important intermediate in the manufacture of ethylene glycol and other products (see the Focus On box on page 375). However, this method is wasteful of 

Show all of the steps in the mechanism for the formation of MTBE from methanol and isobutylene. 

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