Hydrochloric Acid → 3-Perylenecarboxaldehyde

Participants

Reaction Steps

A 3 L 3-neck flask fitted with overhead mechanical stirrer, thermometer, condenser, and N2 line was charged with perylene (Aldrich Chemical Co., Milwaukee, WI, 53201, 25 g, 99 mmol) and o-dichlorobenzene (500 mL). The liquid was warmed until all the large chunks of solid dissolved (80°) and then cooled quickly to give finely divided crystals. After further cooling with a salt-ice bath to 5°, SnCl4 (Aldrich, 98%, 51.2 g, 0.897 mol, 23 mL), was added in one portion. No temperature change occurred. The pot temperature was kept below 5°, and 1,1-dichloromethylmethylether (Aldrich, 14.9 g, 0.13 mol, 11.7 mL) was added dropwise over 1 h. The resulting suspension was warmed slowly to 40° over 2 h and further stirred for 16 h. Considerable HCl gas evolution occurred during the warming and the early part of the reaction at 40°. The reaction mixture was then cooled to 10° and hydrolysed by careful addition of 1 L of cold H2O. After 4 h the layers were separated and the organic layer filtered, dried with anhydrous Na2SO4 (Mallinckrodt Co., 2nd and Mallinckrodt St., St. Louis, MO, 63147, 100 g) and filtered again. The clear yellow solution was passed through a 500 g plug of SiO2 using PhCH3 as the eluting solvent with 500 mL fractions. This chromatography separated unreacted perylene from the aldehyde and a more polar product. Fractions (5 L) containing the aldehyde were combined and the PhCH3 removed. The resulting oily solid was shaken with CH3OH (200 mL) and the orange-brown crystals which formed were collected by filtration to give after drying 23.2 g (83%) of 3-perylenecarbaldehyde mp 223°-233°, (C,H), (lit. mp 236° (darkens >230°), N. P. Buu-Hoi and C. T. Long, Recueil 75 1121 (1956).

Provenance & Evidence