Preparation of Alcohols from Epoxides

3 PREPARATION OF ALCOHOLS BY REDUCTION OF CARBOXYLIC ACIDS AND ESTERS 

Carboxylic acids are exceedingly difficult to reduce. Acetic acid, for example, is often used as a solvent in catalytic hydrogenations because it is inert under the reaction conditions. A very powerful reducing agent is required to convert a carboxylic acid to a primary alcohol. Lithium aluminum hydride is that reducing agent. 

Sodium borohydride is not nearly as potent a hydride donor as lithium aluminum hydride and does not reduce carboxylic acids. 

Esters are more easily reduced than carboxylic acids. Two alcohols are formed from each ester molecule. The acyl group of the ester is cleaved, giving a primary alcohol. 

Lithium aluminum hydride is the reagent of choice for reducing esters to alcohols. O 

Grignard reagents react with ethylene oxide to yield primary alcohols containing two more carbon atoms than the alkyl halide from which the organometallic compound was prepared. 

Organolithium reagents react with epoxides in a similar manner. 

Each of the following alcohols has been prepared by reaction of a Grignard reagent with ethylene oxide. Select the appropriate Grignard reagent in each case. 

Although the chemical reactions of epoxides will not be covered in detail until the following chapter, we shall introduce their use in the synthesis of alcohols here. 

Sample Solution (a) Reaction with ethylene oxide results in the addition of a —CH2CH2OH unit to the Grignard reagent. The Grignard reagent derived from o-bromotoluene (or ochlorotoluene or o-iodotoluene) is appropriate here. 

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Sources of Alcohols 615 Preparation of Alcohols by Reduction of Aldehydes and Ketones 617 Preparation of Alcohols by Reduction of Carboxylic Acids 620 Preparation of Alcohols from Epoxides 620... 

Access to P-mannosides [209] is illustrated by the preparation of 179 from P-glucoside 178 by oxidation of the equatorial 2-OH followed by stereoselective reduction to give the axial alcohol an efficient indirect route to the a-mannosides [206] utilizes the P-thioglucoside 182, readily obtained from epoxide 173, proceeding via an oxidation-reduction protection sequence to give P-thiomannoside glycosyl donor 184, from which a-mannoside 185 can be stereoselectively prepared. 

Benzyloxy-2-methylpropane-l,2-diol, a desymmetrized form of 2-methylpropane-1,2,3-triol with its terminal hydroxy being protected as a benzyl ether, was prepared using the B. subtilis epoxide hydrolase-catalyzed enantioselective hydrolysis of the racemic benzyloxymethyl-l-methyloxirane readily available from methallyl chloride and benzyl alcohol. The preparation of the racemic epoxide, a key intermediate, was described in Procedures 1 and 2 (Sections 5.6.1 and 5.6.2), its overall yield being 78 %. The combined yield of enantiomerically pure (7 )-3-benzyloxy-2-methylpropane-l,2-diol was 74 % from ( )-benzyloxymethyl-l-methyloxirane, as described in Procedures 3-5 (Sections 5.6.3 and 5.6.5), with the overall procedures leading to the biocatalytic dihydroxylation of benzyl methallyl ether . 

The use of a cationic aza-Cope rearrangement in concert with a Mannich cyclization has also been applied to the total synthesis of enantiomerically pure (—)-crinine (359) (205). In the event, nucleophilic opening of cyclopentenoxide with the aluminum amide that was formed on reaction of (/ )-a-methylbenzyl-amine and trimethylaluminum gave the amino alcohol 485 together with its (15,25) diastereomer. Although there was essentially no asymmetric induction in this process, the diastereomeric amino alcohols were readily separated by chromatography, and the overall procedure therefore constitutes an efficient means for the preparation of enantiomerically pure 2-amino alcohols from epoxides. When the hydrochloride salt derived from 485 was treated with paraformaldehyde and potassium cyanide, the amino nitrile 486 was formed. Subsequent Swem oxida-... 

Curini, M. Epifano, F. Marcotullio, M. C. Rosati, O. Zirconium sulfophenyl phospho-nate as a heterogeneous catalyst in the preparation of /1-amino alcohols from epoxides. Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2001, 4149-4152. 

The conversion of alkenes into epoxides is important not only because it is one of the most reliable routes leading from oxidation level 1 to level 2, but also because reactions of non-symmetrical epoxides with nucleophiles invariably proceed as an attack at the less substituted carbon with inversion of configuration. Thus, hydride reduction of epoxides represents an additional option for the preparation of alcohols (Scheme 2.62), especially valuable for the synthesis of optically pure isomers from epoxides obtained by the Sharpless oxidation. It is also of merit that as a result of alkene-epoxide conversion, a nucleophilic moiety (double bond) is transformed into an electrophilic epoxy ring. The latter... 

Alcohols can be obtained from many other classes of compounds such as alkyl halides, amines, al-kenes, epoxides and carbonyl compounds. The addition of nucleophiles to carbonyl compounds is a versatile and convenient methc for the the preparation of alcohols. Regioselective oxirane ring opening of epoxides by nucleophiles is another important route for the synthesis of alcohols. However, stereospe-cific oxirane ring formation is prerequisite to the use of epoxides in organic synthesis. The chemistry of epoxides has been extensively studied in this decade and the development of the diastereoselective oxidations of alkenic alcohols makes epoxy alcohols with definite configurations readily available. Recently developed asymmetric epoxidation of prochiral allylic alcohols allows the enantioselective synthesis of 2,3-epoxy alcohols. 

Catalytic hydrogenolysis of C—O bonds of benzyl esters and similar compounds by deuterium has rarely been used for preparation of labeled compounds, whereas predeuterated Pd in D20 is recommended for formation of deuterated alcohols from epoxides.63... 

N-Nitrosopiperidine (carcinogen) with oxygen adds photolytically to alkenes to give A(-(2-nitro-alkyl)piperidines. Indirect methods of preparing amino alcohols from alkenes include the well-known trans opening of epoxides with nitrogen nucleophiles and a recent, complementary, cis opening of... 

Silyl ethers serve as preeursors of nucleophiles and liberate a nucleophilic alkoxide by desilylation with a chloride anion generated from CCI4 under the reaction conditions described before[124]. Rapid intramolecular stereoselective reaction of an alcohol with a vinyloxirane has been observed in dichloro-methane when an alkoxide is generated by desilylation of the silyl ether 340 with TBAF. The cis- and tru/u-pyranopyran systems 341 and 342 can be prepared selectively from the trans- and c/.y-epoxides 340, respectively. The reaction is applicable to the preparation of 1,2-diol systems[209]. The method is useful for the enantioselective synthesis of the AB ring fragment of gambier-toxin[210]. Similarly, tributyltin alkoxides as nucleophiles are used for the preparation of allyl alkyl ethers[211]. 

The remarkable stereospecificity of TBHP-transition metal epoxidations of allylic alcohols has been exploited by Sharpless group for the synthesis of chiral oxiranes from prochiral allylic alcohols (Scheme 76) (81JA464) and for diastereoselective oxirane synthesis from chiral allylic alcohols (Scheme 77) (81JA6237). It has been suggested that this latter reaction may enable the preparation of chiral compounds of complete enantiomeric purity cf. Scheme 78) ... 

Desymmetrization of meso-bis-allylic alcohols is an effective method for the preparation of chiral functionalized intermediates from meso-substrates. Schreiber et al has shown that divinyl carbonyl 58 is epoxidized in good enantioselectivity. However, because the product epoxy alcohols 59 and 60 also contain a reactive allylic alcohol that are diastereomeric in nature, a second epoxidation would occur at different rates and thus affect the observed ee for the first AE reaction and the overall de. Indeed, the major diastereomeric product epoxide 59 resulting from the first AE is less reactive in the second epoxidation. Thus, high de is easily obtainable since the second epoxidation removes the minor diastereomer. 

Due to the abundance of epoxides, they are ideal precursors for the preparation of P-amino alcohols. In one case, ring-opening of 2-methyl-oxirane (18) with methylamine resulted in l-methylamino-propan-2-ol (19), which was transformed to 1,2-dimethyl-aziridine (20) in 30-35% yield using the Wenker protocol. Interestingly, l-amino-3-buten-2-ol sulfate ester (23) was prepared from l-amino-3-buten-2-ol (22, a product of ammonia ring-opening of vinyl epoxide 21) and chlorosulfonic acid. Treatment of sulfate ester 23 with NaOH then led to aziridine 24. ... 

Allylic alcohols can be converted to epoxy-alcohols with tert-butylhydroperoxide on molecular sieves, or with peroxy acids. Epoxidation of allylic alcohols can also be done with high enantioselectivity. In the Sharpless asymmetric epoxidation,allylic alcohols are converted to optically active epoxides in better than 90% ee, by treatment with r-BuOOH, titanium tetraisopropoxide and optically active diethyl tartrate. The Ti(OCHMe2)4 and diethyl tartrate can be present in catalytic amounts (15-lOmol %) if molecular sieves are present. Polymer-supported catalysts have also been reported. Since both (-t-) and ( —) diethyl tartrate are readily available, and the reaction is stereospecific, either enantiomer of the product can be prepared. The method has been successful for a wide range of primary allylic alcohols, where the double bond is mono-, di-, tri-, and tetrasubstituted. This procedure, in which an optically active catalyst is used to induce asymmetry, has proved to be one of the most important methods of asymmetric synthesis, and has been used to prepare a large number of optically active natural products and other compounds. The mechanism of the Sharpless epoxidation is believed to involve attack on the substrate by a compound formed from the titanium alkoxide and the diethyl tartrate to produce a complex that also contains the substrate and the r-BuOOH. ... 

Sulfonic peracids (66) have also been applied recently to the preparation of acid sensitive oxiranes and for the epoxidation of allylic and homoallylic alcohols, as well as relatively unreactive a, p - unsaturated ketones. These reagents, prepared in situ from the corresponding sulfonyl imidazolides 65, promote the same sense of diastereoselectivity as the conventional peracids, but often to a higher degree. In particular, the epoxidation of certain A -3-ketosteroids (e.g., 67) with sulfonic peracids 66 resulted in the formation of oxirane products (e.g., 68) in remarkably high diastereomeric excess. This increased selectivity is most likely the result of the considerable steric requirements about the sulfur atom, which enhances non-bonded interactions believed to be operative in the diastereoselection mechanism <96TET2957>. 

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