Methyl iodide, solvent effect shifts

Other companies (e.g., Hoechst) have developed a slightly different process in which the water content is low in order to save CO feedstock. In the absence of water it turned out that the catalyst precipitates. Clearly, at low water concentrations the reduction of rhodium(III) back to rhodium(I) is much slower, but the formation of the trivalent rhodium species is reduced in the first place, because the HI content decreases with the water concentration. The water content is kept low by adding part of the methanol in the form of methyl acetate. Indeed, the shift reaction is now suppressed. Stabilization of the rhodium species and lowering of the HI content can be achieved by the addition of iodide salts. High reaction rates and low catalyst usage can be achieved at low reactor water concentration by the introduction of tertiary phosphine oxide additives.8 The kinetics of the title reaction with respect to [MeOH] change if H20 is used as a solvent instead of AcOH.9 Kinetic data for the Rh-catalyzed carbonylation of methanol have been critically analyzed. The discrepancy between the reaction rate constants is due to ignoring the effect of vapor-liquid equilibrium of the iodide promoter.10... 

The beneficial effect of added phosphine on the chemo- and stereoselectivity of the Sn2 substitution of propargyl oxiranes is demonstrated in the reaction of substrate 27 with lithium dimethylcyanocuprate in diethyl ether (Scheme 2.9). In the absence of the phosphine ligand, reduction of the substrate prevailed and attempts to shift the product ratio in favor of 29 by addition of methyl iodide (which should alkylate the presumable intermediate 24 [8k]) had almost no effect. In contrast, the desired substitution product 29 was formed with good chemo- and anti-stereoselectivity when tri-n-butylphosphine was present in the reaction mixture [25, 31]. Interestingly, this effect is strongly solvent dependent, since a complex product mixture was formed when THF was used instead of diethyl ether. With sulfur-containing copper sources such as copper bromide-dimethyl sulfide complex or copper 2-thiophenecarboxylate, however, addition of the phosphine caused the opposite effect, i.e. exclusive formation of the reduced allene 28. Hence the course and outcome of the SN2 substitution show a rather complex dependence on the reaction partners and conditions, which needs to be further elucidated. 

The chemical shifts of polar molecules are frequently found to be solvent dependent. Becconsall and Hampson have studied the solvent effects on the shifts of methyl iodide and acetonitrile. The results obtained from dilution studies in various solvents may be explained as arising from a reaction field around the solute molecules. The spherical cavity model due to Onsager was used to describe this effect, and this model was completely consistent with the experimental data when a modified value for the dielectric constant, s, of the particular solvent was used. 

It is likely that the ASIS effect originates in the short-lived clustering of aromatic molecules around the terminus of the solute through dipole-induced dipole (or eventually C.T.) interactions (86). These effects would be superimposed onto any normal R. F. effects. Abraham (157) has determined the chemical shifts of the proton signal of methyl iodide in a number of solvents (Table 28), and introduced the concept of excess high field shift (EHS). The EHS is defined as the difference between the chemical shifts in aromatic and aliphatic solvents of similar structure. 

Wetzler and coworkers123 employed 4-aminophthalimide (63) and 4-amino-lV-methyl-phthalimide (64) as solvatochromic (and thermochromic) fluorescent probes in solvent mixtures. A bathochromic shift of the emission spectra was found in mixtures of toluene with ethanol and with acetonitrile123 when the more polar solvent was added to toluene, but raising the temperature causes a relative hypsochromic effect. Mixtures of benzene and acetonitrile were studied by Nevecna and coworkers124 for their polarity by means of the probes 46 and 47 and with respect to the correlation of this with the rate constants of the reaction of triethylamine with ethyl iodide. The fluorescence of the ammonium salt of 4-(l-naphthylsulfonate)aniline (84) in dioxane and water mixtures was studied by Hiittenhain and Balzer125. 

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