Electrochemical carboxylation of benzoyl bromide as effective phenylglyoxylic acid synthesis route

Abstract

Electrochemically activated insertion of carbon dioxide into benzoyl bromide (BB) is shown to result in phenylglyoxylic acid in yield of 88%. The influence of the nature of the cathode material and the background electrolyte on the electrochemical reduction of benzoyl bromide (the key step of its electrochemical carboxylation) and on the phenylglyoxylic acid yield in the presence of CO 2 is studied. Using benzoyl bromide instead of benzoyl chloride (BC) in the electrochemical carboxylation process enables the phenylglyoxylic acid yield to be raised from 39% to 88%.