slowly into a cold hcl solution and stirred the contents were then transferred to a 500 ml separatory funnel shaken and the separated organic layer was stored over anhydrous mgso 4 before discarding the aqueous layer was washed with 25 ml of layer the dried organic layer was filtered and the volatiles were rotary evaporated off leaving a tan solid which was dried under vacuum at 60 u00b0 c for two hours yielding a crude product the solid was recrystallized from hexane to give 3 phenyl 4 ethoxyacetophenone a mixture of 3 phenyl 4 ethoxyacetophenone 32 2 g 0 134 mole and 250 ml of p dioxane was added to a one liter three necked round bottom flask equipped with a pressure equalizing dropping funnel thermometer and a polytetrafluoroethylene coated magnetic stir bar the mixture was stirred to dissolve the solid then 480 mi of sodium hypobromite solution 0 53 mole prepared by dissolving naoh 126 g 3 15 moles in 600 ml of deionized water followed by dropwise addition of 45 ml of bromine 0 87 mole over a 60 minute time period was added the solution temperature rose from 22 u00b0 c to 48 u00b0 c during the addition the reaction solution was stirred an additional 15 minutes after the last of the naobr addition then a solution of 40 weight percent aqueous nahso 3 41 9 g 1 61 moles was added to remove any.