Me/'Me Me/'Me betaine solvents for dehydration. Another reason for the formation of cyclopropyl salts 3 might be the use of DBU as a base, which is a weak base compared with dimsylsodium or sodium tert-butoxide. As shown in Scheme 5, strong bases such as potassium tert-butoxide and butyllithium will afford epoxides, the normal reaction products. On the other hand, DBU: HBFd will afford a proton source of betaine intermediate, which ...