Sciencemadness Discussion Board

How is benzyl alcohol prepared from toluene oxidation ?

Meri - 7-6-2015 at 06:44

How do we convert toluene to benzyl alcohol thanks in advance.Can i use Chromium(III) oxide instead KMnO4?

gdflp - 7-6-2015 at 06:53

There is no way of stopping potassium permanganate at the alcohol, as long as there is enough of it, it will oxidize every benzylic carbon with at least one hydrogen attached all the way to a carboxylic acid. Chromium(III) oxide is not an oxidizing agent, I have never seen it used to oxidize anything organic. Read this thread, there is a lot of information about this topic, as well as further oxidation to benzaldehyde. http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=2223

byko3y - 7-6-2015 at 08:13

23 pages... okay. There's much simple answer: halogenate the toluene (hypochlorite, hypobromite, TCCA, etc), and then hydrolyse with alkali. You need mild conditions for monohalogenation.