An instant and facile bromination of industrially-important aromatic compounds in water using recyclable CaBr₂–Br₂ system

Various industrially-important brominated intermediates have been instantly synthesized using aq. CaBr₂–Br₂ system as an efficient and recyclable brominating reagent under aqueous conditions at room temperature without the need for metal catalysts or acidic additives. Structurally-diverse phenol and aniline derivatives with strong electron-withdrawing groups such as carboxylic, nitro and formyl show remarkable reactivity to the brominating reagent and brominated in 92–98% yield with high purity (>99%) in a very short reaction time. Organic solvent-free conditions, a feature of the green chemistry, were successively used not only for the reactions but also for the isolation of products at the end of the reaction. The recycling of HBr by its neutralization, thereby generating additional amounts of industrially-important CaBr₂ has been designed and developed. The brominating reagent has been recycled and regenerated, and the process was repeated up to 4 cycles after the fresh batch using the regenerated brominating reagent having almost identical selectivity and isolated yields, which seems to be the most promising methodology from the viewpoint of the green approach to organic synthesis.