ethylene urea

[tvs17]

For synthesis of ethylenedinitramine I'm interested in syntheses of ethylene urea.

One reaction should work very well, reacting ethylenediamine with urea between 110-240 dC. Unfortunately I don't have ethylendiamine.

Another proces should also work well, atleast I thought it would. Reaction between ethylene glycol and urea at 160-240 dC, with yield of 55%.
When I heat a stochiochemical mixture of glycol and urea under reflux, it slowly turns light green. At about 180 dC mixture starts evolving ammonia gas. I end up with a sticky fluid.. No crystals are precipitated or whatever.. Now, I've heard that an polymer is formed of ethylene urea.. At very low yields ethylene urea could be obtained via pyrolys... But I'm not really a fan of this.

Does anyone knows any other processes or have more information on the reaction between urea and glycol?

[CodeMason]

Are there any other synonyms for this chemical? My searches turned up zip.

[tvs17]

Well, other name is 2-imidazolidone. But I think ethylene urea is more used.
This is the structure:
<pre>
CH2-N-H
| \
| C=O
| /
CH2-N-H
</pre>
When nitrated it yields dinitroethyleneurea, which is easily hydrolized to EDNA.

[This message has been edited by tvs17 (edited October 03, 2001).]

[CodeMason]

Well I still can't help you with synthesis, but since this forum allows HTML for structural formulas you can use & nbsp ; (remove the spaces between the word and the & and the ; ), and it makes a space.

[This message has been edited by CodeMason (edited October 03, 2001).]

[nbk2000]

Why go through all that? Just use the HTML (PRE) (/PRE) tags, substituting <> for (). Observe:

<pre>
CH2-NH
| \
| C=O
| /
CH2-NH
</pre>


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[This message has been edited by nbk2000 (edited October 03, 2001).]