Acid And Base Impurities Lab Report

Danielle Pitter

CHEM 137

Professor D’Amelia

3/1/17

Extraction of a Neutral Compound from Acid and Base Impurities

Discussion:

The diethyl ether solvent is nonpolar; therefore, based on the expression like dissolves like, other nonpolar molecules will dissolve in it. The 9-fluorenone is a nonpolar molecule; therefore, it will dissolve in the nonpolar diethyl ether. The benzoic acid has a polar carboxyl group; however, the ring is nonpolar. The nonpolar ring in the benzoic acid is what makes it soluble in the diethyl ether. The ethyl-4-aminobenzoate is similar to benzoic acid, in that it has a nonpolar ring and has polar attachments. The nonpolar ring is what makes it soluble in diethyl ether. Each compound is soluble in water because they

HCl is a polar molecule therefore it wouldn’t be soluble in diethyl ether, a nonpolar solvent. Based on solubilities, HCl is an inorganic compound that would rather be in the aqueous layer, while the diethyl ether, an organic compound would rather be in the organic layer. The upper layer consists of the organic solvent and organic products, which are the ether solution with benzoic acid and Hydrogen. The bottom layer consists of the aqueous solution and inorganic products, ethyl-4-aminobenzoate and . The ether solution is the upper layer because it is less dense than water. The aqueous layer is the bottom layer because it is denser than the ether

This low percent recovery is because some of the solutions spilled onto the table, losing a lot of the precipitate. The recovered ethyl-4-aminobenzoate’s boiling point was within the accepted range of 85C; meaning, the amount recovered was pure. The % recovery for the benzoic acid was 5.33%. This low percent recovery could be due to the fact that instead of adding NaCl to increase the precipitate amount, the salting out effect, more of the HCl was used. This caused the precipitate amount to increase slightly but not as much as it could’ve if the salting out effect was used. The recovered benzoic acid’s boiling point was within the accepted range of 120C; meaning that the recovered compound was