Methanol Lab Report

In this experiment, extraction was used as a separation technique to separate the acid, base, and neutral compounds. In extraction, two immiscible solvents with opposite polarities are used to dissolve different parts of the solute with different polarities, so they form two distinct liquid layers. In this experiment, methanol, an organic solvent, and an aqueous solution were used as the two immiscible solvents. The extraction solvent must also be capable of dissolving one of the mixture components. While initially it seems as though methanol, an organic solvent would be incapable of dissolving a polar acid or base, the conjugate of the acidic and basic compound will dissolve in methanol. The conjugate acid and base were obtained by adding

All the data used for analysis of the neutral compound was received from Andrew ______, since there was not enough sample left to perform MP analysis after the recrystalization step. Since the ranges for these melting points are larger than the ranges observed for the recrystalization product, it can be inferred that these samples contained impurities, and also possibly traces of ethyl acetate or water, depending on the solvent they were in. These melting points can also be used to make a rough guess about the identities of these compounds, as seen later in this report. According to the MSDS pages for salicylic acid, 4-nitroaniline, and p were 159, 148.5, and 101 respectively. The melting points for the acidic and neutral compounds were hence too low, and the melting point for the basic compound was too high. The errors in the acidic and neutral compounds can be explained by impurities in the crude product, along with the presence of the solvents, ethyl acetate and water, which disturbed the stability of the compounds, and led to lower melting points over a larger range. The abnormally high melting point of the base may have been observed due to improper separation of the acid and base solutions in the separation funnel. Some of the acidic compound may have entered the basic solution and reacted with the base to form a high melting point salt, making the melting point of the base appear abnormally high. The Mel-Temp was also turned on a high setting accidentally, so it is possible that the temperature rose too quickly to get a good reading of the melting