Effect of the Nature of Exchange Cations in Montmorillonite Clay on the Direction of Verbenol Epoxide Transformations

Transformations of (n)-cis-verbenol epoxide 1 in the presence of montmorillonite clay containing different exchange cations were studied for the first time. It was demonstrated that the nature of a cation exerts a substantial effect both on the contribution from undesirable resinification and on the distribution of lowmolecular products. The use of Co 2+ -containing montmorillonite clay allowed us to obtain a substantial (1.5 times) increase in the content of the target compound 3-methyl-6-(1-methylethenyl)cyclohex-3-ene-1,2diol 2 in reaction mixture comparing to acidic montmorillonite clay species used earlier.†