Syntheses Of Benzoylformic Acid And Its Esters

Benzoylformic acid and its esters with carbonyl, carboxyl and ester groups in molecular structure appear to be multi active, which play an essential role in biological metabolism and organic synthesis.In the paper, a-bromoacetophenone was first prepared from acetophenone and styrene with H2O2/HBr system in the yields of 87.4% and 93.9%, respectively. The processes involving traditional hydrolysis and microwave irradiation were utilized to synthesize α-hydroxyacetophenone froma-bromoacetophenone in the yields of 82.3% and 83.7%, respectively. And microwave process improved hydroxylation. Followed by the further oxidation of a-hydroxyacetophenone with H2O2, benzoylformic acid in the yield of 83.7% was obtained.The esterification involving the reaction of benzoylformic acid with methyl and ethyl alcohols were studied to synthesize methyl benzoylformate and ethyl benzoylformate, respectively. The yields of 95.1% and 97.5% were obtained at optimized reaction conditions. Moreover, the possible reaction mechanisms were discussed in the paper.