Submitted by ZoofusCos t3_z0dthj in askscience
Saedius t1_ix5bcy3 wrote
Yes - although you'd have to ask at some point in time what constitutes the same molecule. With enough energy we can burn all the carbon into carbon dioxide, reduce the CO2 to methane, and use that to make every carbon skeleton extant, but I shudder at the budget. There are others as well. You could heat the alkane in the absence of oxygen to pyrolyze it. From that, one should be able to get a variety of aromatic scaffolds that you can elaborate to most aromatic structures. You'd expect yields in the fraction of a percent, and a reagent/energy budget that rivals the GDP of a small country.
roundearthervaxxer t1_ix5colm wrote
Fascinating. Can you elaborate? Why so expensive?
Joe_Q t1_ix5dfc7 wrote
Some of the transformations that would be required in u/Saedius' protocol would be so low-yielding, and / or the desired product such a small component of a complicated mixture, that you'd need to spend use a lot of time and resources to generate them in reasonable quantities and purify them.
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