Synthesis of β-Amino Alcohols from Terminal Epoxy Fatty Acid Methyl Ester

Fats and oils are renewable feedstock that can be treated chemically or enzymatically to derive materials that often act as a replacement for petroleum-derived materials. Long-chain fatty epoxides can be transformed to several chemical derivatives. There has been increasing interest in using these substances as intermediates in the production of new biobased industrial materials. In the present work, renewable methyl 10,11-epoxyundecanoate were reacted with various cyclic, aliphatic, and aromatic amines in the presence of zinc(II) perchlorate hexahydrate as a Lewis acid catalyst under solvent-free conditions, to derive several new β-amino alcohols in a regioselective manner.