Acylation

The acylation of aromatic hydrocarbons is one of the most important reactions in synthetic organic chemistry and a widely applied method to prepare aromatic ketones. It is also of considerable practical significance in the chemical industry since the products are intermediates in the manufacture of fine chemicals and other intermediates. This chapter reviews the acylation of aromatic and aliphatic compounds and the related processes, and discussions of acylations can be found in other review papers about the use of homogeneous and heterogeneous electrophilic catalysts. The acylation of aliphatics is an important but less frequently used and studied process. In principle, the acylation of aliphatic compounds is analogous with the Friedel-Crafts acylation of aromatics in the sense that a hydrogen of the reacting alkanes, alkenes, or alkynes is replaced by an acyl group to yield ketones, unsaturated ketones, or conjugated acetylenic ketones, respectively.