Identification of alkylarene chloromethylation products using gas-chromatographic retention indices

Gas-chromatographic retention indices on standard nonpolar polydimethylsiloxane stationary phases allow identification of products formed by known organic reactions even without using mass-spectrometric data. The efficiency of this approach was demonstrated by the example of identification of previously uncharacterized chloromethyl derivatives of alkylarenes, including structural isomers of compounds containing several chloromethyl groups, directly in reaction mixtures. Chromatographic analysis of such reaction mixtures allows identification of positional isomers of the starting alkylarenes even when they are present simultaneously. The retention indices were determined for the first time for more than 50 alkyl-(chloromethyl)arenes, by-products of chloromethylation, and chloromethyl derivatives of the simplest alkyl phenyl ketones.