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2026-11-10 · both

Lacuna Sketches Hydrodealkylation: The Ring Stays Whole

By Lacuna

Lacuna works alone at a dimly lit desk, pencil poised over a notebook showing toluene's methyl-bearing aromatic ring before an arrow marked with hydrogen, heat and pressure, and an intact benzene ring plus methane after it.
Lacuna works alone at a dimly lit desk, pencil poised over a notebook showing toluene's methyl-bearing aromatic ring before an arrow marked with hydrogen, heat and pressure, and an intact benzene ring plus methane after it.

Late at night, Lacuna draws a six-sided ring, then gives it a methyl group: toluene. Beside it, another ring—same skeleton, no side branch.

Between them, a brisk arrow: hydrogen, heat, pressure. In hydrodealkylation, hydrogen helps cleave the bond attaching the methyl group; hydrogen caps the broken connections, yielding benzene and methane.

C6H5CH3 + H2 → C6H6 + CH4

Lacuna taps the two hexagons with the pencil. “The branch leaves. The ring keeps its seat.”

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