Two benzyl alcohol is a kind of important intermediates in organic synthesis, in recent years due to the two benzyl alcohol is widely used in iron and steel industry, so the demand becomes more huge, research about its synthesis has aroused great attention of domestic and foreign counterparts. At present, two methods of synthesizing benzyl alcohol are mainly as follows:

The first method is to use tetrahydrofuran as solvent, and two phenyl ketone is obtained by NaBH4 reduction. The disadvantage of this method is that NaBH4 is insoluble in tetrahydrofuran, and the contact of reaction material is not enough, and part of it is wasted.

  The second method is to recover the product by two zinc ketone with zinc powder under alkaline condition. The method has a long reaction time and needs more than 15 hours, and the conversion of two benzophenone is not complete, and the separation of two benzyl alcohol and two benzophenone is difficult. And the solvent used in general is methanol, boiling point is low, harm to human body is bigger, will cause certain pollution to the environment.

  The third is obtained by catalytic hydrogenation of two benzophenone under high pressure. The method requires high equipment and harsh reaction conditions.

Therefore, after the unremitting efforts of scientific research personnel, fourth methods emerged. Two benzyl alcohol was synthesized with two phenyl ketone as raw material, zinc powder and sodium hydroxide as reducing agent and ethanol as solvent.

  The research in sodium hydroxide under ultrasonic irradiation with two benzophenone as raw material, zinc powder as reducing agent and ethanol as the most suitable solvent for the synthesis of benzyl alcohol two conditions: n (two BP) Bn (Zn) = 1B3 (molar ratio), ultrasonic power 500W, radiation time of 20 minutes, the yield is up to 90.2% compared with the conventional method (reaction time 2 h, the yield of 80%), the ultrasonic radiation method greatly shortened the reaction time, the method is simple and high yield.