Acta Chimica Slovaca (ACS) publishes papers on fundamental and applied aspects of chemistry, biochemistry, chemical technology, chemical engineering and process control, biotechnology and food technology. Welcome are also topics which include chemical aspects of materials, physical chemistry and chemical physics, analytical chemistry, macromolecular chemistry and biomedical engineering.

Towards the synthesis of (all-rac)-α-tocopherol from trimethylhydroquinone and isophytol at reduced pressure

Juraj Gömöry, Milan Králik a, Alexander Kaszonyi * b

Zentiva a.s., Nitrianska 100, 920 27 Hlohovec
a VUCHT j.s.c., Research Institute of Chemical Technology, Nobelova 34, 836 03 Bratislava, Slovak Republic
b Department of Organic Technology, Slovak University of Technology, Radlinského 9, 812 37 Bratislava, Slovak Republik

E-mail: * alexander.kaszonyi@stuba.sk

Abstract: The cyclocondensation of trimethylhydroquinone and isophytol to (all-rac)-α-tocopherol was studied at reduced pressure at the presence of water or (all-rac)-α-tocopherol as solvent, and ZnCl2 as catalyst. The obtained results confirm that the yield of (all-rac)-α-tocopherol can be increased at reduced pressure due to more efficient removal of reaction water, generated by the condensation reaction of isophytol (IPh) and trimethylhydroquinone (TMHQ). Auxiliary (all-rac)-α-tocopherol used as solvent makes a better reaction medium than water and the reached highest yield 89 % is comparable with result obtained at the presence of butyl acetate as solvent.

Keywords: (all-rac)-α-tocopherol, trimethylhydroquinone, isophytol, ZnCl2, catalyst

Full paper in Portable Document Format: acs_0076.pdf

Acta Chimica Slovaca, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2011, pp. 3—14