hoe will you carry out the following conversation?
benzene to p-nitroanilie?
Answers
The answer is below. Starting with benzene, the first step is to nitrate it with a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acid to give nitrobenzene. If you could nitrate this again, the nitro group would go in the meta position as a nitro group is a meta director. So, you have to reduce it. There are lots of ways to do this but the tin/HCl method shown is fine and will give you aniline. Aniline can be nitrated directly but it is too reactive and you will lose selectivity and probably get some over nitration so first convert it to acetanilide and then nitrate. This will give you, mainly, the p-nitroacetanilide product (a dash of the ortho product which can be removed by recrystallization). Finally, hydrolyze off the acetyl group and you will get p-nitroaniline.