> chemistry > composés-halogénés > benzyl-chloride > synthesis-of-benzyl-chloride-chemx01

Synthesis of benzyl chloride

chemx01 - 2012-09-08

Warning benzyl chloride is a strong skin irritant so wear gloves when using it!

Benzyl chloride is often used as an alkylating agent in organic synthesis as well as for preparations of Grignards and so on.

Acronyms used:
RBF- round bottomed flask
BnCl -- benzyl chloride

Note 1. - The HCl used should be as concentrated as possible, but If you only have technical grade it can be used as well. 
Note 2. - The boiling point differs from lit. B.p but it distilled in a quite narrow range so it should be esentially pure.

Lit.:http://www.lambdasyn.org/synfiles/benzylchlorid.htm

Donald Slayton - 2015-04-11

Truly the work of a dedicated person.

HomesteadScientific - 2012-09-10

I had read a procedure about making Benzyl Chloride by dissolving chlorine in toluene and using bromine and UV light to catalyze and make Benzyl Chloride. I tried it and I got nothing. Have you heard of doing it that way?

bwill22100 - 2013-09-15

does the procedure in this video produce pure product?

chemx01 - 2012-09-19

Yes it's classical benzylic chlorination, It's quite hard to do (well not really hard but rather tedious). But you'll obtain a mixture of product which needs to be separated this method gives you pure product.

gglafatottari Drullusukkor - 2013-01-28

why so much HCL? how much more than stoichiometric amounts did you use of hcl?

Juraj Markus - 2014-06-02

Do i need to stabilize it if i want to store it?

Federico D'Angelo - 2015-02-26

What about mixing benzyl alcohol with sodium chloride, put it in an icebath and then add concentrated sulfuric acid dropwise? keeping temperature at 5 or 10 degrees during the addition.. I've seen these with primary allyl alcohols and sodium bromide.. but here we have an benzyl alcohol

Nah! - 2020-04-28

According to Vogel's Handbook of Organic Chemistry this method will work.

Use a fumehood to separate the layers or outside.

With aqueous HCl I keep both layers and see what the properties are to avoid that your product get lost.

HomesteadScientific - 2012-09-23

Cool. Thanks.

Sheradons Mark - 2013-03-21

I have also tryed bubbling chlorine gas in toluene in front of UV light with and with out iodine ,,I also got nothing,,,,

Christian Alexander Ornelas Lim - 2013-07-03

Nice :)

luis mtz - 2014-05-07

I realize this sinthesis using 32% hcl and acs benzyl alcohol, but when the phases separates the organic phase was clear white not yellow like in the video, that stuff make cry like baby