Synthesis of fluorinated β-diketone analogues in multi-tens gram scale

Abstract

Rapid growth in technologies has led to an increase in electronic device waste. The waste is forecasted to increase 3-5% yearly and an effort to recycle these electronics upon its end of useful life is very important. Some efforts made by scientist to extract the metal complexes/compound include Liquid-Liquid Extraction (LLE) method. This method is rather straightforward and utilizes simple apparatus, however, it can cause harm to the environment due to the solvents. To combat this issue, scientist is currently interested in Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) method which is a green extraction method.

Past studies have shown that fluorinated organics in supercritical fluid have the potential to increase the recovery yield of the metal ions. However, the fluorinated organics synthesized may not be available commercially or cost abundant when purchased from vendors. Hence, this research aims to synthesize fluorinated organics and to validate the process for upscaling synthesis so that the fluorinated organics can be used for commercial application.

The fluorinated organics synthesized are then characterized using a Fourier-Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) analysis techniques to identify the functional groups of the synthesize chemicals and to identify the impurities present in the product. The IR spectra and NMR spectra of the product is compared to that of the reference sample and the similarity between the two spectra is one of the success determinations of the product. Furthermore, the purity of the product can be determined from the comparison of the NMR and the FTIR spectra of the reference with the sample synthesized.

From the experiment, three fluorinated organics were synthesized. All three fluorinated organics show high similarity to the reference sample from the NMR and IR spectra. Furthermore, upscaling was done all of the fluorinated organics and the upscaling result shown consistency in the purity. The yield, however, need to be further enhanced to not waste the chemicals used and the solvents used need to be recycled to minimized waste during synthesizing.