3-Heptanone Lab Report

In this lab, the oxidation of a secondary alcohol was performed and analyzed. An environmentally friendly reagent, sodium hypochlorite, was used to oxidize the alcohol, and an IR spectrum was obtained in order to identify the starting compound and final product. The starting compound could have been one of four alcohols, cyclopentanol, cyclohexanol, 3-heptanol, or 2-heptanol. Since these were the only four initial compounds, the ketone obtained at the end of the experiment could only be one of four products, cyclopentanone, cyclohexanone, 3-heptanone, or 2-heptanone. In order to retrieve one of these ketones, first 1.75g of unknown D was obtained. 1mL of Acetic acid was then added to Unknown D and the solution was stirred. Next, 15mL of sodium

This aqueous solution was then heated until all the dichloromethane evaporated off. An error could have occurred at this point in the experiment if the hot plate was too hot. If the hot plate was set above the boiling point of the ketone, the ketone could have evaporated of along with the dichloromethane. This would result in a lower percent yield of the ketone. To prevent this from happening, the hot plate should not exceed 130˚C, so no matter what ketone was isolated, it would not evaporated off. At this point I found that if the hot plate was at 147˚C the solution boiled more vigorously, meaning that my ketone hade a boiling point of 147˚C, which was close to the known boiling point value for 3-heptanone, 146˚C. The hot plate was turned down after this was noticed. After the solution was heat, approximately for five minutes, the mass was found for the bottom layer, which was 2.27g, and the percent yield was calculated. The percent yield was determined by taking the mass of the final ketone and dividing it by the original mass of the alcohol. The percent yield was calculated to be 129.7%. This high percent yield resulted from the presence of