Industrial extractants aliphatic amines

Four types of organic amines exist, as shown in Table 4.8 primary amines RNHj, secondary R2NH2, tertiary RsNH, and quaternary R4N (Appendix D). The hydrocarbon chain R is usually of length Cg-Cu, commonly a straight aliphatic chain, but branched chains and aromatic parts also occur. In general the amines extract metal complexes in the order tertiary > secondary > primary. Only long-chain tertiary and—to a smaller extent—quarternary amines are used in industrial extraction, because of their suitable physical properties trioctylam-ine (TOA, 8 carbons per chain) and trilauryl amine (TLA, 12 carbons per chain) are the most frequently used. For simplicity we abbreviate all amines by RN, and their salts by RNH L . 

Thirty-nine different dithiocarbamates have been efficiently prepared through a one-pot reaction of an aliphatic primary or secondary amine, carbon disulfide and an alkyl halide (Figure 2.16). " Typically, all reagents were liquids and the mixture slowly solidified upon reaction. Therefore, although the reaction does not use solvents, the reagents are probably acting as the solvent in this procedure. Additionally, the reactions were quenched with water and extracted with ethyl acetate, so solvent was used. Nevertheless, this is an excellent synthetic method for the preparation of S-alkyl dithiocarbamates, which are useful compounds for the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. 

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