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Hydrolysis Reaction
Hydrolyses of organic compounds require the use of strong aqueous acids or bases and extensive periods of high conductive heating. Microwave irradiation is quite useful with this synthetic application in that it will hydrolyze esters, amides, nitriles, and peptides into carboxylic acids and their respective amines or alcohols in a very short period of time.10,223,632-638 Scheme 115 shows both the acid- and base-catalyzed hydrolysis of acetanilide to aniline.10,223 Ester hydrolysis (saponification) to a carboxylic acid is shown in Scheme 116.638 Under basic conditions, 2-cyanotoluene can be hydrolyzed to both its carboxylic acid and amide derivative in a 5:95 ratio (Scheme 117).10,223 Lastly, peptide hydrolysis, which normally can take twelve or more hours, is successfully completed in 15-30 minutes with microwave heating (Scheme 118).10,223
![](/pub/media/wysiwyg/microwave-chem-book/chapter-4/scheme115.png)
Scheme 115
![](/pub/media/wysiwyg/microwave-chem-book/chapter-4/scheme116.png)
Scheme 116
![](/pub/media/wysiwyg/microwave-chem-book/chapter-4/scheme117.png)
Scheme 117
![](/pub/media/wysiwyg/microwave-chem-book/chapter-4/scheme118.png)
Scheme 118
Instruments
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