Esters of pyromellitic acid. Part II. Esters of chiral alcohols: para pyromellitate diesters as a novel class of resolving agents and use of pyromellitates as duplicands for chiral purification

Methods are presented for the preparation of pyromellitate esters of chiral terpene alcohols, including d- (3) or l-menthol (4), d-isomenthol (7), l-borneol (8), or d- (5) or l-isopinocampheol (6). Alcoholysis of PMDA in CH2Cl2/Et3N led to the formation of monoesters (e.g., 18) or diesters (11, 12), as needed, relying on the differential reactivity of the two anhydride groups. The easily isolated para diester (11) crystallized before the meta diester (12) from HOAc. Nicotine (1, 14) was efficiently resolved as 1:1 salts with the menthyl (11a, 11b) or bornyl (11f) para diesters, prototypes of what promises to be a large class of novel resolving agents. Recrystallization of para-di-d-menthyl pyromellitate (11a) greatly improved the chiral purity of the contained d-menthol (3), an example of purification by "duplication". An alternative synthesis of specific diesters took advantage of the easily separated benzyl diesters and their derived acid chlorides (19, 21), with the benzyl esters serving as temporary blocking groups removable by catalytic hydrogenolysis. Pyromellitate tetraesters (26) were prepared by base-catalyzed transesterification of the tetraethyl ester (25). Tri- l-menthyl pyromellitate (27b) was obtained by catalytic hydrogenolysis of benzyl tri-l-menthyl pyromellitate (31b), itself prepared from the alcoholysis of benzyl pyromellitate triacid chloride (30) with l-menthol (4).