Our previous work established a continuous-flow synthesis of
pristane, which is a saturated branched
alkane obtained from a Basking Shark. The
dehydration of an
allylic alcohol that is the key to a tetraene was carried out using a packed-bed reactor charged by an
acid-
silica catalyst (HO-SAS) and flow hydrogenation using molecular
hydrogen via a Pd/C catalyst followed. The present work relies on the additional propensity of Pd/C to serve as an
acid catalyst, which allows us to perform a flow synthesis of
pristane from the aforementioned key
allylic alcohol in the presence of molecular
hydrogen using Pd/C as a single catalyst, which is applied to both
dehydration and hydrogenation. The present one-column-two-reaction-flow system could eliminate the use of an
acid catalyst such as HO-SAS and lead to a significant simplification of the production process.