A new synthesis approach for the generation of single chain CP mixtures composed of a few major compounds.

Chlorinated paraffins (CPs) are complex mixtures, which consist of thousands of individual compounds with no dominant representative. Consequently, knowledge on structure and environmental relevance of individual CP congeners is poor. Similarly to the synthesis of individual CPs, the generation of less complex CP mixtures that can be thoroughly analyzed may be used to overcome some drawbacks of the highly complex technical CP mixtures. Here, we present a new synthesis approach to generate such simple CP mixtures by decarboxylation of polyunsaturated fatty acids followed by saturation of the double bonds by chlorination. Specifically, α-linolenic acid (18:3Δ9,12,15) was decarboxylated to heptadecatriene. The resulting raw product was chlorinated with SO2Cl2. Purification by column chromatography led to a main fraction consisting of four major peaks originating from hexachloroheptadecane (C17H30Cl6) isomers (∼80% of the total peak area) along with ∼20 low abundant by-products, according to gas chromatography with electron capture negative ion mass spectrometry. In the same way, decarboxylation and subsequent chlorination of other polyunsaturated fatty acids may lead to further simple CP mixtures with other chain lengths. Although these simple CP mixtures cannot fully reflect the various structural features present in technical mixtures they could be beneficial for transformation studies because changes in the CP pattern can easily be noted which is in contrast to technical CP mixtures. Such simple CP mixtures could also be used in toxicity tests which are difficult to perform with technical CP mixtures because of their high complexity.