Indian Journal of Chemistry Vol. 45B, April 2006, pp. 972-975 Natural kaolinitic clay: A remarkable catalyst for highly regioselective chlorination of arenes with Cl2 or SO2Cl2 B Jayachandran, Prodeep Phukan,# Thomas Daniel & A Sudalai* National Chemical Laboratory, Pune 411 008, India E-mail:
[email protected] Received 30 September 2004; accepted (revised) 7 November 2005 Natural kaolinitic clay containing transition metals s as Fe and Ti in its lattice has been found to exhibit unusual regioselectivity in the liquid-phase chlorination of arenes with either Cl2 or SO2Cl2 as the chlorinating agent para-Chlorinated products are predominant for most of the substrates with an exceptional case of ortho-selectivity for the chlorination of aniline. Keywords: Chlorination, chlorine, sulfuryl chloride, aniline, ortho-chloroaniline IPC: Int.Cl.7 C 07 C Introduction of chlorine into aromatic rings by acids such as zeolites for the chlorination of arene4. electrophilic substitution is an important synthetic Although para-selectivity was achieved using zeolite4 transformation because chlorinated hydrocarbons are because of it’s shape selective nature, there is not such recognized as versatile starting materials and additives report for ortho-selective chlorination. Sheldon in th e p rod uctio n o f h igh qu ality in secticides, reported a highly regioselective ortho-chlorination of 1 fungicides, herbicides, dyes, pharmaceuticals etc. phenol with SO2Cl2-amine systems in homogeneous Moreover, they can serve as precursors for numerous phase5. In recent years, acid catalysis of organic functionalities, such as phenols, aromatic ethers and transformations by clay aluminosilicates6 is an area of thioethers, amines, aryl hydrazines, benzonitriles, considerable potential and interest due to the ease of benzaldehyd es, fluoro aromatics and arom atic handling and w ork-up, absence o f toxicity and hydrocarbons2.