Oxidation
Oxidation is a core chemistry used to manufacture wide range of products.
Mainly oxidation is done through below mentioned reaction types:
- Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a commonly used oxidation agent that can oxidize carbon-carbon double bonds to epoxides, carboxylic acids into percarboxylic acids, and sulphides into sulfoxides. The use of hydrogen peroxide for the oxidation of aliphatic thiols and thioethers to sulfonyl chlorides, sulfoxides and sulfones is best known alternative to the chlorine oxidation. Oxidation with hydrogen peroxide is highly sustainable on production scale since the only side product of the reaction is water. In some instances, oxidation is also done using the mixture of halogen and hydrogen peroxide.
- Nitric acid is a widely used strong oxidizing agent that is particularly used to convert aromatic alkyl groups to carboxylic acids and alcohols into carbonyl compounds.
- Sodium hypochlorite which is famously know as beach is also one of the most adopted reagent used for the oxidation, which is also known as Hoffman’s-degradation