Durene, or 1,2,4,5-tetramethylbenzene, is an organic compound with the formula C6H2(CH3)4. It is a colourless solid with a sweet odor. The compound is classified as an alkylbenzene. It is one of three isomers of tetramethylbenzene, the other two being prehnitene (1,2,3,4-tetramethylbenzene) and isodurene (1,2,3,5-tetramethylbenzene). Durene has an unusually high melting point (79.2 °C), reflecting its high molecular symmetry.
Durene, or 1,2,4,5-tetramethylbenzene, is an organic compound with the formula C6H2(CH3)4. It is a colourless solid with a sweet odor. The compound is classified as an alkylbenzene. It is one of three isomers of tetramethylbenzene, the other two being prehnitene (1,2,3,4-tetramethylbenzene) and isodurene (1,2,3,5-tetramethylbenzene). Durene has an unusually high melting point (79.2 °C), reflecting its high molecular symmetry.
==Production== It is a component of coal tar and was first prepared from pseudocumene in 1870. It is produced by methylation of other methylated benzene compounds such as p-xylene and pseudocumene. C6H4(CH3)2 + 2 CH3Cl → C6H2(CH3)4 + 2 HCl In industry, a mixture of xylenes and trimethylbenzenes is alkylated with methanol. Durene can be separated from its isomers by selective crystallization, exploiting its high melting point. The original synthesis of durene involved a similar reaction starting from toluene.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).