Selectively reductive amination of levulinic acid with aryl amines to N-substituted aryl pyrroles

Synthesizing nitrogen (N)-containing molecules from biomass derivatives is a new strategy for production of this kind of chemicals. Herein, for the first time we present the synthesis of N-substituted aryl pyrroles via reductive amination/cyclization of levulinic acid (LA) with primary aromatic amines and hydrosilanes (e.g., PMHS) over CsF, and a series of N-substituted aryl pyrroles could be obtained in good to excellent yields at 120 degrees C. The mechanism investigation indicates that the reaction proceeds in two steps: the cyclization between amine and LA occurs first to form intermediate 5-methyl-N-alkyl-1,3-dihydro-2H-pyrrolones and their isomeride (B), and then the chemo-and region-selective reduction of intermediates take place to produce the final products. This approach for synthesis of N-substituted aryl pyrroles can be performed under mild and green conditions, which may have promising applications.(c) 2023 Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communi-cations Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).