Question

Complete the mechanism for the reaction of 2-butanol in sulfuric acid at 140℃ by adding any missing atoms, bonds, charges, nonbonding electrons, and curved arrows. Note the use of a generic alcohol to represent another 2-butanol introduced in panel three.

Answer 1

Concepts and reason

A reaction in which $2 - {\rm{butanol}}$ reacts with sulfuric acid is given with the mechanistic steps. The mechanism given needs to be completed with the curved arrows and the formal charges present in the species. Identify the attacking species and the leaving groups in the reaction steps and draw the arrows accordingly.

Fundamentals

Generally, an arrow starts from a nucleophile and ends to an electrophile showing the attack, that is, from a high electron density region to low electron density region. A leaving group leave by taking the electron density.

The direction of arrow basically shows the movement of electrons.

Show the movement of electron from nucleophile to an electrophile by using arrow as shown below:

Write the next step of the mechanism and generate the carbocation by using arrows as shown below:

Now, the final product of the reaction will form by the deprotonation of the carbocation formed in the previous step as shown below:

Ans:

The complete mechanism can be shown as follows by using curved arrow: