Application
Ethyl acetoacetate is a versatile reagent that can be used as a nucleophile in alkylation, conjugate addition and condensation reactions. Some of its applications are:
Alkylation at the α-carbon of ethyl acetoacetate followed by hydrolysis and decarboxylation can afford a variety of methyl ketones.
It also undergoes acylation at the α-carbon in the presence of MgCl2 and pyridine to give synthetically important intermediates.
It can be used in Knoevenagel condensations with aliphatic, aromatic, and heteroaromatic aldehydes to produce α-alkylideneacetoacetates.