Dehydration of amides to give nitriles

Description: Primary amides can be converted to nitriles with a dehydrating reagent such as P₂O₅ .

Notes: Note that the net effect of this reaction is to remove two H atoms and one O from the amide. For this reason this is called a “dehydration”.

Only primary amides work for this reaction. Other reagents can be used for this, however, such as thionyl chloride (SOCl₂)

Examples:

Notes:

Mechanism:

The reaction begins with the oxygen of the amide attacking phosphorus (through a resonance form) forming an O–P bond (Step 1, arrows A, B, and C). After a proton transfer (Step 2, arrows D and E) a lone pair from nitrogen forms a new C–N bond, expelling oxygen (Step 3, arrows F and G). Finally the nitrogen is deprotonated (Step 4, arrows H and I) to give the neutral nitrile.

Notes:

There are certainly other reasonable ways to draw proton transfer (Step 2) as well as other bases to use for deprotonation (Step 4) besides phosphate. This is just one reasonable possibility.

It’s also reasonable to show fragmentation of the P–O–P bond in step 3, although for simplicity’s sake this was not drawn.