Electrochemical oxidation of some hydroquinone derivatives in the presence of p-toluenesulfinic acid: Thermodynamic and Mechanistic studies

In this work, electrochemical oxidations of three hydroquinone species (tert-Butylhydroquinone, 2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid and hydroquinone) have been investigated both computationally and experimentally. The computational data were obtained using DFT (BP86) level of theory and 6-31G(d,p) basis set. Also, cyclic voltammetry and controlled potential coulometry were used to obtain the experimental results. The results indicate that the electrochemical oxidation potential of studied species (EpA) is dependence on ΔGtot, and it increases upon increasing ΔGtot. The ΔGtot of studied species, calculated by the use of a general thermodynamic cycle, were used to mechanistic study of the electrochemical oxidation of tert-Butylhydroquinone in the presence of p-toluenesulfinic acid.