Study on the synthesis of diethyltoluamide as insect repellents

Abstract

Diethyltoluamide is evaluated as effective insect repellents with no side effects and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to be used as insect repellents, especially mosquitoes, in Vietnam as well as in the world. In this paper, we present a synthesis method including the optimal conditions to prepare the bioactive molecule diethyltoluamide from 3-methyl benzoic acid. Using SOCl2 as a chlorinating agent, the procedure is simple, under mild reaction conditions, the desired diethyltoluamide is obtained in excellent yield up to 92% with the scale is over 500g/batch.