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Friedel-Crafts Processes

Pressure Chemical has the chemical processing equipment and expertise to carry out challenging Friedel-Crafts reactions using classic Lewis Acid catalysts, as well as more modern methods employing supercritical CO2.

Versatility
The Friedel-Crafts electrophilic aromatic substitution reaction can be utilized to perform acylation and alkylation, as well as aromatic nitration, aromatic halogenation, aromatic sulfonation.

Conventional Friedel-Crafts reactions can be challenging because they can require long reaction times, low temperatures, and use environmentally unfriendly catalysts, such as AlCl3 or H2SO4. PCC, with over 40-years of process development expertise, can suggest optimization techniques to make these Friedel-Crafts processes more straightforward.

It has been reported that use of supercritical CO2 in Friedel-Crafts reactions allows conditions to be tuned to get high product selectivity (via catalyst selection, flow rate, temperature, etc). This approach also facilitates solvent removal and product isolation. Alkylations and acylations using scCO2 generally employ recyclable zeolite-based catalysts, another benefit to this approach. PCC has broad capabilities for the use of supercritical solvents and can help you with research and scale-up of your scCO2 Friedel-Crafts process.

Friedel-Crafts alkylation of Benzene

Friedel-Crafts acylation of Ferrocene

Pressure’s technical staff will help you choose the most efficient process methodology based on your product requirements