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CO6. Protonation of Oxygen

  • Page ID
    4236
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    CO6. Protonation of the Alkoxide Anion

    After the addition of an anionic nucleophile, reaction mixtures are usually treated with or water or dilute aqueous acid. The acid provides a proton that can be picked up by the alkoxide ion formed in the nucleophilic addition. An alcohol is formed as a result. Overall, carbonyl addition reactions usually involve addition of a nucleophile to the carbonyl carbon and addition of a proton to the carbonyl oxygen.

    The order of these steps can be very important. On paper, a carbonyl could be turned into an alcohol by adding a proton to the carbonyl oxygen, and then adding a nucleophile to the carbonyl carbon. However, things might not work out that way in reality. The potential problem lies in the fact that anionic nucleophiles can be pretty basic. If protons are added first, the anionic nucleophile is likely to pick up a proton rather than donate to the carbonyl. Once the nucleophile has picked up a proton, it is no longer anionic, and is less attracted to the partially positive carbonyl. Furthermore, it may have donated its only lone pair to the proton, leaving it completely unable to donate to the carbonyl.

    Problem CO6.1.

    Provide curved arrows and predict the direction of equilibrium in the following cases.

    COpostproton_31zv.gif

    Problem CO6.2.

    Suppose nucleophilic addition was performed in methanol (10 mL) as a solvent, using 25 microliters of cyclopentanone and an equimolar amount as the of sodium cyanide (that means the same number of moles of sodium cyanide as cyclopentanone).

    1. Show the mechanism for the reaction, using curved arrows in each step.
    2. Comment on how the use of methanol as a solvent (rather than just adding an equimolar amount of methanol) would influence the direction of equilibrium for the final protonation step.

    This page titled CO6. Protonation of Oxygen is shared under a CC BY-NC 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Chris Schaller.

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