ABSTRACT
The isolation of individual cresol isomers, more particularly, meta-and para-cresols from a mixture of isomeric cresol mixture had been a master problem in organic chemical synthesis. While ortho-cresol could be more easily separated because of somewhat lower boiling point (approx. 191C at atmospheric pressure) meta-and para-cresols could not be separated by distillation because of almost identical boiling points (202C and 201-202C at atmospheric pressure, respectively). Various processes have been established in the laboratory but only a few have been commercialized. Some of the commercial processes are discussed here in some detail.
