How can 2-ethylcyclohexane be converted to 1-ethylcyclohexanol and 2-ethylcyclohexanol?

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Originally Posted by chirodoc

How can 2-ethylcyclohexane be converted to 1-ethylcyclohexanol and 2-ethylcyclohexanol?

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Sorry, my organic is a bit rusty, and my references are boxed up

Are you sure it is not 2-ethylcyclohexEne? There are many ways to add water across a double bond to form an alcohol

as eluded to by the previous post, the trick is to introduce a double bond into the system.

not a lot you can add to a hydrocarbon... but you can halogenate with a free radical reaction like bromination or chlorination. Then you need to generate the c=c bond by elimination. Then you can add across the double bond by a few methods to get the OH in the right spot.

I won't go into details on the exact reagents, as this is something you should have in your notes and its work you need to do yourself to understand the class.

but the patten of taking a hydrocarbon, halogenating it, and doing elimination for the alkene is a common path in many organic classes... there's a lot you can do with alkenes, so being able to generate them is very useful.