The Convenient Way for Obtaining Geranial by Acid‐Catalyzed Kinetic Resolution of Citral

A new simple method has been developed for isolation of geranial from citral, which is a mixture of two isomeric aldehydes, geranial and neral. The storage of citral in the presence of K10 montmorillonite clay has been demonstrated to result in an almost complete conversion of neral to dimeric and oligomeric products, with most geranial remaining unconverted. This enables isolation of geranial with the yield of up to 94%, based on the amount of geranial originally present in citral.