AbstractChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

Whereas benzyl chloride is normally more reactive than benzyl alcohol toward aromatic hydrocarbons, at 20°C alkylation of toluene is totally inhibited in the presence of an equimolar mixture of the two benzylating agents and of a clay-based catalyst. At 80°C, all the alcohol molecules are first consumed. Then, and only then, at time t = 45 mn, the chloride molecules start their reaction.

Aromatic hydrocarbons are submitted to Friedel-Crafts alkylation in the presence of the K10 montmorillonite impregnated with zinc chloride. The presence of benzene is found to improve significantly competitive alkylation of a co-reactant.

Whereas toluene is more reactive than mesitylene when these substrates are benzylated separately by benzyl chloride, one-pot reactions in the presence of “clayzic” conversely favor mesitylene, with high intermolecular selectivity (a factor 6–15).