Abstract

The development of sustainable methods for organic synthesis is an important field within chemical research. One approach to the development of such processes is the use of reagentless techniques such as use of light, heat or electricity to drive chemical reactions.

Although widely studied for over 150 years, the uptake of electrochemical processes within organic synthesis is relatively low. This is in part because electrosynthesis has not been available in a convenient to use format with batch processes often requiring long reaction times for low productivity. The recent development of high throughput electrochemical flow reactors however, provides a productive, accessible approach to the development and use of organic electrochemical trasformations.  Within the Brown group, a series of extended channel length electrochemical flow reactors have been developed allowing high productivity and scalability for a range of reactions including methoxylation, amidation, esterification and TEMPO catalysed alcohol oxidation. More recently we have reported the continuous electrochemical deprotection of p-methoxybenzyl (PMB) protected alcohols,4 an efficient, scalable process which avoids use of toxic reagents such as DDQ or CAN and obtained productivities of >50 mmol/hour of deprotected alcohol. Sustainability metrics for the process showed improved efficiency compared to existing literature procedures.