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Numerous routes exist to convert guaiacol, or 2-methoxyphenol, to vanillin. . This reaction was first reported by Karl Reimer in 1876, and from the 1920s through the mid-1950s, guaiacol, extracted from wood tar, coal tar, and later synthesized as a petrochemical product, was the major starting material for the synthesis of synthetic vanillin.
 * From guaiacol

While vanillin production from guaiacol was eventually eclipsed by production from lignin, during the 1970s, Rhône-Poulenc (now Rhodia) introduced a new process for producing vanilling from guaiacol. In this process, guaiacol first reacts with glyoxylic acid by electrophilic aromatic substitution. Then, the resulting vanilmandelic acid undergoes oxidative decarboxylation to produce vanillin.

With the closure of most of the world's lignin-based vanillin producers during the 1980s, guaiacol has again become the principal raw material for vanillin synthesis.