Author(s)

Nahid Shabestary^*, Cynthia M. Chapple, Derek T. Rensing, Thao T. Doan, Sadegh Khazaeli, Michael J. Sabo, Andrew D. Beach

Department of Chemistry, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL, USA.

A remarkable rate enhancement technique has been devised for a typical nucleophilic displacement reaction by using triphase catalytic materials based on tetraoctylammonium exchange forms of hectorite clay. Pseudo-first order rate constants (k_obs) for the conversion of 1-bromobutane to the corresponding chloride under triphase conditions using the clay catalyst in the presence of various polar cosolvents have been observed. The results here have shown that the addition of a cosolvent increases the catalytic activity of the triphase system by several fold. In addition, the results have demonstrated that each cosolvent has a unique concentration for achieving an optimum reaction rate.

Triphase Catalysis, Cosolvent, Organoclay, Nucleophilic Displacement Reaction

Shabestary, N. , Chapple, C. , Rensing, D. , Doan, T. , Khazaeli, S. , Sabo, M. and Beach, A. (2015) Effect of Cosolvent in a Nucleophilic Substitution Reaction Using Organoclay in Triphase Catalytic System. Modern Research in Catalysis, 4, 78-85. doi: 10.4236/mrc.2015.43010.