Mercuric carbonate

Mercuric Carbonate. Basic mercuric carbonate/7ti5 ti7-7< -7/, HgCO 3HgO, maybe prepared by the addition of sodium carbonate to a solution of mercuric chloride. The brown precipitate, which lacks usefulness, is generally not isolated rather, the slurry is refluxed, whereupon the carbonate decomposes to red mercuric oxide. 

His most brilliant discoveries were made at the Lokk pharmacy. His notebooks, which have since been edited and published by Baron Nordenskiold, show that he prepared oxygen in 1771 and 1772, that is to say, at least two years before Priestley did. Scheele made it by heating silver carbonate, mercuric carbonate, mercuric oxide, niter, and magnesium nitrate, and by distilling a mixture of manganese dioxide and arsenic acid. When oxygen is prepared by heating silver or mercuric carbonate, the carbon dioxide must be absorbed m caustic alkali. 

The reagent is prepared by the reaction of mercurous carbonate with trifluoro-acetic acid (used in excess) or of sodium trifluoroacetate with mercurous nitrate (67.7% yield).1... 

C. Freese, and A. J. Cox also obtained it by treating a soln. of mercuric nitrate with potassium dichromate or chromate. The conditions of equilibrium are illustrated by Fig. 51. N. A. E. Millon found that the same product is obtained with mercuric chloride, but A. Caillot could not prepare it with mercuric bromide. A. J. Cox, and A. Geuther obtained it by the hydrolysis of mercuric chromate and A. Geuther, by pouring a cold solution of mercuric carbonate in cone, nitric acid into cold water—the precipitate is at first yellow, but soon becomes scarlet-red. B. Skormin also prepared this salt. 

The occurrence of a hydrogen isotope effect in an electrophilic substitution will certainly render nugatory any attempt to relate the reactivity of the electrophile with the effects of substituents. Such a situation occurs in mercuration in which the large isotope effect = 6) has been attributed to the weakness of the carbon-mercury bond relative to the carbon-hydrogen bond. The following scheme has been formulated for the reaction, and the occurrence of the isotope effect indicates that the magnitudes of A j and are comparable ... 

Terminal alkyne anions are popular reagents for the acyl anion synthons (RCHjCO"). If this nucleophile is added to aldehydes or ketones, the triple bond remains. This can be con verted to an alkynemercury(II) complex with mercuric salts and is hydrated with water or acids to form ketones (M.M.T. Khan, 1974). The more substituted carbon atom of the al-kynes is converted preferentially into a carbonyl group. Highly substituted a-hydroxyketones are available by this method (J.A. Katzenellenbogen, 1973). Acetylene itself can react with two molecules of an aldehyde or a ketone (V. jager, 1977). Hydration then leads to 1,4-dihydroxy-2-butanones. The 1,4-diols tend to condense to tetrahydrofuran derivatives in the presence of acids. 

Pd(II) compounds coordinate to alkenes to form rr-complexes. Roughly, a decrease in the electron density of alkenes by coordination to electrophilic Pd(II) permits attack by various nucleophiles on the coordinated alkenes. In contrast, electrophilic attack is commonly observed with uncomplexed alkenes. The attack of nucleophiles with concomitant formation of a carbon-palladium r-bond 1 is called the palladation of alkenes. This reaction is similar to the mercuration reaction. However, unlike the mercuration products, which are stable and isolable, the product 1 of the palladation is usually unstable and undergoes rapid decomposition. The palladation reaction is followed by two reactions. The elimination of H—Pd—Cl from 1 to form vinyl compounds 2 is one reaction path, resulting in nucleophilic substitution of the olefinic proton. When the displacement of the Pd in 1 with another nucleophile takes place, the nucleophilic addition of alkenes occurs to give 3. Depending on the reactants and conditions, either nucleophilic substitution of alkenes or nucleophilic addition to alkenes takes place. 

With Lewis acids as catalysts, compounds containing more than one alkoxy group on a carbon atom add across vinyl ether double bonds. Acetals give 3-alkoxyacetals since the products are also acetals, they can react further with excess vinyl ether to give oligomers (228—230). Orthoformic esters give diacetals of malonaldehyde (231). With Lewis acids and mercuric salts as catalysts, vinyl ethers add in similar fashion to give acetals of 3-butenal (232,233). 

At ordinary temperatures, mercury is stable and does not react with air, ammonia (qv), carbon dioxide (qv), nitrous oxide, or oxygen (qv). It combines readily with the halogens and sulfur, but is Htde affected by hydrochloric acid, and is attacked only by concentrated sulfuric acid. Both dilute and concentrated nitric acid dissolve mercury, forming mercurous salts when the mercury is in excess or no heat is used, and mercuric salts when excess acid is present or heat is used. Mercury reacts with hydrogen sulfide in the air and thus should always be covered. 

In the hot precipitation method, sodium carbonate solution is added slowly to a refluxing solution of mercuric chloride, followed by an additional reflux period of 1 to 2 h. The washed precipitate is then dried. A variation allows the substitution of mercuric nitrate for the chloride if substantial quantities of sodium chloride are used. Sodium hydroxide, ia the presence of sodium carbonate, is the precipitant. 

Derivatives. Small amounts of alkyl quiaolines are present ia the tars resulting from the carbonization and Hquefaction of coal (111). Good yields of 4-methyl quinoline, 4,6-dimethyl quinoline [826-77-7], and 4,8-dimethyl quinoline [13362-80-6] are obtained from 4-(diethylamino)-2-butanone and the appropriate aniline. This approach is a promising addition to the traditional syntheses discussed eadier (112). Vlaylacetylene reacts with mercuric chloride and either aniline or -toluidine to yield 4-methyl- and 4,6-dimethyl quinoline, respectively (113). 

Hydrochloric acid may conveniently be prepared by combustion of hydrogen with chlorine. In a typical process dry hydrogen chloride is passed into a vapour blender to be mixed with an equimolar proportion of dry acetylene. The presence of chlorine may cause an explosion and thus a device is used to detect any sudden rise in temperature. In such circumstances the hydrogen chloride is automatically diverted to the atmosphere. The mixture of gases is then led to a multi-tubular reactor, each tube of which is packed with a mercuric chloride catalyst on an activated carbon support. The reaction is initiated by heat but once it has started cooling has to be applied to control the highly exothermic reaction at about 90-100°C. In addition to the main reaction the side reactions shown in Figure 12.6 may occur. 

Dimethyl ketals and enol ethers are stable to the conditions of oxime formation (hydroxylamine acetate or hydroxylamine hydrochloride-pyridine). Thioketals and hemithioketals are cleaved to the parent ketones by cadmium carbonate and mercuric chloride. Desulfurization of thioketals with Raney nickel leads to the corresponding methylene compounds, while thioenol ethers give the corresponding olefin. In contrast, desulfurization of hemithioketals regenerates the parent ketone. ... 

Mercury(II) trifluoroacetate is a good electrophile that is highly reactive toward carbon-carbon double bonds [52, 53, 54] When reacting with olefins in nucleophilic solvents, it usually gives exclusively mercurated solvoadducts, but never products of skeletal rearrangement Solvomercuration-demercuratton of alkenes with mercury(II) trifluoroacetate is a remarkably effective procedure for the preparation of esters and alcohols with Markovnikov s regiochemistry [52, 5J] (equation 24)... 

To return to a more historical development the mercuric acetate oxidation of substituted piperidines (77) should be discussed next. This study established that the normal order of hydrogen removal from the aW-carbon is tertiary —C—H > secondary —C—H > primary —C—H, an observation mentioned earlier in this section. The effect of substitution variations in the piperidine series can be summarized as follow s l-mcthyl-2,6-dialkyl and 1-methyl-2,2,6-trialkyl piperidines, as model systems, are oxidized to the corresponding enamines the 1,2-dialkyl and l-methyl-2,5-dialkyl piperidines are oxidized preferentially at the tertiary a-carbon the 1-methyl-2,3-dialkyl piperidines gave not only the enamines formed by oxidation at the tertiary a-carbon but also hydroxylated enamines as found for 1-methyl-decahydroquinoline (48) (62) l-methyl-2,2,6,6-tctraalkyl piperidines and piperidine are resistant to oxidation by aqueous mercuric acetate and... 

The bicyclic amine 11-methyl-l l-azabicyclo[5.3.1]hendecanc (71) provided a model system in which the hydrogens on the equivalent a-tertiary-carbon atoms cannot be trans to the nitrogen-mercury bond in the mercur-ated complex and in which epimerization at these a carbons is impossible (77). This bicyclic system is large enough to accommodate a... 

The results observed in the oxidation of alkaloids which indicated something of the stereochemistry required for oxidation and prompted studies on model systems can now be interpreted more confidently. However, care must be used when basing steric differentiation on mercuric acetate oxidation studies since conditions must be employed which avoid epimerization at carbons alpha to the nitrogen. 

Another convenient method for the preparation of tertiary enamines involves the dehydrogenation of saturated bases with mercuric acetate (111-116). A trans-1,2 elimination occurs, which requires an antiperi-planar position of the nitrogen-free electron pair and the eliminated atom. A preferential elimination of the hydrogen atom from the tertiary carbon atom is supposed. Overoxidation can be avoided by adding disodium ethyl-enediaminotetraacetate to the reaction mixture (117). 

Bohlmann et al. (118-121) observed that an infrared absorption band between 2700-2800 cm is characteristic of a piperidine derivative possessing at least two axial carbon-hydrogen bonds in antiperiplanar position to the free-electron pair on the nitrogen atom. The possibility of forming an enamine by dehydrogenation can be determined by this test. Compounds which do not fulfill this condition cannot usually be dehydrogenated (50, 122,123). Thus, for example, yohimbine can be dehydrogenated by mercuric acetate,whereas reserpine or pseudoyohimbine do not react (124). The quinolizidine (125) enamines (Scheme 4), l-azabicyclo(4,3,0)-nonane, l-azabicyclo(5,3,0)decane, l-azabicyclo(5,4,0)undecane, and l-azabicyclo(5,5,0)dodecane have been prepared in this manner (112,126). 

Those epimers of 1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-j8-carbolines of general structure 139, in which the hydrogen on carbon-1 of the carboline moiety is axial, are converted into the corresponding 3,4-dihydro- -carbolinium salts (141) by mercuric acetate oxidation. Sodium dichromate... 

In a modified procedure the free carboxylic acid is treated with a mixture of mercuric oxide and bromine in carbon tetrachloride the otherwise necessary purification of the silver salt is thereby avoided. This procedure has been used in the first synthesis of [1.1.1 ]propellane 10. Bicyclo[l.l.l]pentane-l,3-dicarboxylic acid 8 has been converted to the dibromide 9 by the modified Hunsdiecker reaction. Treatment of 9 with t-butyllithium then resulted in a debromination and formation of the central carbon-carbon bond thus generating the propellane 10." ... 

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