Efficient Flow Synthesis of Glycidyl Ether Using BuSnCl3 as a Mild Lewis Acid

A ring-opening protocol of epichlorohydrin (2) with 2-ethylhexanol (1a) was investigated for the synthesis of chlorohydrin 3a. BuSnCl3 proved to be an efficient mild Lewis acid catalyst, yielding 3a with high selectivity. A scalable flow synthesis of 3a was successfully achieved by modifying the flow setup for scaling up. The flow synthesis of glycidyl ether 4a from 3a was also carried out in an efficient manner by using the basic treatment.