Rearrangement of Hexamethyl Acetone

Abstract

DURING the course of recent studies concerned with the alkylation of isoparaffins, in which hexamethyl acetone was used as one of the reagents, an interesting rearrangement of this ketone was observed. Hexamethyl acetone, benzene, and sulphuric acid (s.g. 1.84) were stirred together at room temperature for 24 hr. ; the resulting material was purified by distillation and recrystallization. The product of the reaction was shown to be a mixture of the original ketone and 3:3:4: 4-pentan-2-one.