Kinetic, Spectral and Mechanistic Regularities of New Reaction Systems With Chromogenic SN2-Type Reaction for Detection of Epoxy Compounds

Abstract

New reaction systems “oxirane – nucleophile X^– – proton-donor reagent AH – solvent” have been proposed for the detection of epoxides in which nucleophilic opening of the oxirane ring occurs accompanied by the formation of a colored product. The kinetic and mechanistic regularities of reactions in the proposed systems were investigated. Reaction orders with respect to the components of the systems have been determined: close to 1 – for oxirane and X⁻, close to 0 – for AH. It was shown that the proposed chromogenic reactions represent nucleophilic substitution of S_N2-type and allow the detection of epoxides containing both a terminal and internal epoxy group, which can be used to monitor processes in systems where epoxides are either the initial compounds or the synthesis products. Based on the conducted studies, it is possible to develop methods for the quantitative determination of epoxides using kinetic methods of analysis and UV–visible spectroscopy.