Abstract: Hydrolysis of acetonitrile to acetamide was achieved using a novel EEW technique with zinc as a catalyst. EEW is very cost effective technique with the acetamide crystals physically separated from the zinc nanoparticles (ZNPs) after the reaction. The capacitance and charging voltage for the explosion are 96 μF and ~4-4.4kV, respectively. Other transition metals as (Fe, Ti, Nb..) as well as s and p-block metals (Mg and Al) were used successfully to catalyze the hydration to acetamide. Other nitriles such as acrylonitrile, propionitrile and benzonitrile were used to study the generalization of the hydration, however only acetonitrile was effectively converted to acetamide. Generally, transition metal salts accompanied by organic compounds were used to catalyze hydration to amides. However, this is the first report of this type of hydration reaction using EEW without organic catalyst. Also, an investigation was made to determine if the NPs or metal atoms/ions were the main catalyst to produce amides. During the synthesis, metal cyanide nanoparticles were also produced with zinc and copper wires with core size of order 20nm.  Transmission electron microscopy shows the spherical particles with the metallic core embedded in a polymer matrix. Powder X-ray diffraction was used to confirm the identity of the metallic NPs, cyanide NPs and the produced acetamide. ATR-IR was used to characterize the capping agent as well as the synthesized acetamide.

Synthesis of acetamide from acetonitrile hydrolysis using EEW catalyzed with metal nanoparticles

249th National Meeting (2015)

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