Highly regioselective dialkylation of naphthalene using various alkylating agents can be achieved over zeolite catalysts. For example, the tert-butylation of naphthalene (1) using tert-butanol in cyclohexane over a dealuminated H-Mordenite (HM) zeolite has been optimised to give a 60% yield of 2.6-di-tert-butylnaphthalene (3) with a 2.6/2.7 ratio of over 50. This has been achieved by varying the reaction time, temperature, solvent, pressure, amount of tert-butanol, solvent and catalyst, Si/Al ratio of the catalyst, and the mode of addition. The zeolites can be easily regenerated by heating and reused.
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Smith et al. (2003) studied this question.