Elimination Reactions

What are elimination reactions?

The elimination reaction occurs when two substituents leave the molecule to form an unsaturation, which can be a double bond, triple bond or ring. They occur through two types of unimolecular (E1) and bimolecular (E2) mechanisms.

In an E1 reaction, the molecule undergoing the reaction is a substrate that decomposes into a carbocation intermediate, which then undergoes a deprotonation reaction to form the final products. E2 reactions, on the other hand, involve direct removal of a leaving group and a proton from a substrate, resulting in the formation of a double bond. The mechanism of an E2 reaction is typically concerted, meaning that it occurs in a single step..

In addition to their applications in organic synthesis, elimination reactions also play a key role in many industrial and biological processes. For example, the dehydrogenation of alkanes to form alkenes is an important reaction in the petrochemical industry for the production of various industrial chemicals and fuels. Similarly, the elimination of water from a molecule is an important step in many metabolic reactions in living organisms..

A particular case of elimination reaction is when the two groups that are detached from the molecule belong to the same carbon, since it results in a carbene (:CR2).
In this section, the most significant named organic reactions are listed, classified according to the type of chemical reaction. Among the named organic reactions of the elimination type we can highlight the following:

Back to the Named Organic Reactions and Chemical Reagents page.

Shares