[roboa1983]

Hi
I have been looking on the internet, and I can't find anywhere which are the uses of benzil. If anyone can help me or point me towards a webpage that can answer my question, I'll be very grateful

[limpet chicken]

One thing I can think of, is that it could be used as a precursor to the battlefield chemical weapon, the anticholinergenic deliriant BZ, which is chemicalls, 3-quinuclidinol benzillate.

Its active in mid-microgram levels, and causes 3 days or more of intensely realistic, and unpleasant delirial hallucinations, the effect is supposed to be something like a very intense and confusing long lived dose of solanaceous plants, such as datura species, or mandrake.

I have, in foolish youth, experimented with datura myself, and that was the MOST messed up things I have ever done, I was actually smoking invisible cigarettes, believing they were real.

Some people do things like run round naked, gibbering, in public and got arrested, or died, on weaker deliriants like these, very nasty family of drugs.

[chemical alchemist]

An experiment that is done at my school in the organic teaching lab is that taking benzil, they make a compound named 1,2,3,4-tetraphenylcyclopentadienone.  Then, in another step, they take said compound to make 1,2,3,4-tetraphenylnaphthalene.  

Hope it helps.

[sadak]

Benzil is a highly underrated compound with many uses.  It can be easily converted to chiral 1,2-diamines, which are expensive to buy from the catalogue houses.
Take benzil and dissolve in glacial acetic acid and add ammonium acetate.  Heat the mixture with good stirring to ~ 60oC.  The reaction is complete when the reaction mixture changes from yellow to green.  Now pour the reaction mixture into iced water and stir.  You will get a green sticky mass, which will solidify over night.  Filter and crush the solid and wash with copious amounts of water before drying.  It is very important to dry completely.  Now reduce the product with Lithium in ammonia/THF at –65oC.  Now you have the crude diamine which can be resolved using tartaric acid to afford both the R,R and S,S diamines.  Details of the experimental are in the literature.  I have made loads this way its great fun
 

[movies]

Don't you need cyclohexanone in that first reaction too?

I did this reaction once with about 25 g of benzil.  I worked out the cost of the starting materials (around $10, mostly for the acetic acid solvent) and the product, which you could buy for some ridiculous amount per gram.  I think I made what translated to $873 worth of product!  Talk about profit margin.  Of course the chiral ligand I was trying to make sells for about $240/gram, so it was worth the work.

[laotree]

make diphenylhydatoin. This forum has a mechanism about it. Benzilic rearrangement. or ecompound.com has the hydatoin mechanism.