Understanding monoacylation of symmetrical diamines: A kinetic study of acylation reaction of m-phenylenediamine and benzoic anhydride in microreactor

Monoacylated symmetrical diamines are building blocks or intermediates of several well-established drugs. However, for the symmetrical diamines, the two amine groups located in a similar chemical environment make the selective monoacylation rather difficult and no kinetics study has ever been reported before. To comprehend this kind of reaction more deeply, a continuous flow microfluidic system was developed to evaluate the reaction kinetics of m -phenylenediamine and benzoic anhydride. At first, the reaction order of each reactant, pre-exponential factors and activation energies were determined in turn. The possible reaction mechanism was postulated from the reaction order. Then, a series of validation experiments were designed to show the accuracy and the applied range (concentration and temperature) of the kinetic model. Next, to obtain a controlled selectivity, the effects of initial concentration, reaction temperature and molar ratio on the selectivity were investigated through the model simulation. In the end, under the conditions optimized by the kinetic model, 96.9% selectivity and 92.5% yield were obtained in the microreactor.