Observations
Step
Observation
Adding sulfuric acid into the alcohol and carboxylic acid solution
Surface of the round bottom flask is warm
Poring the ester solution in the bottle after reflux
Dense gas can be seen
Washing the ester with distilled water
The ester layer is immiscible with distilled water.
Washing the ester with sodium carbonate solution
Effervescence
-bubbles of gas produced
-a ‘pop’ sound could be heard when the separating funnel is closed and opened again.
The ester layer is immiscible with the sodium carbonate solution
Adding anhydrous calcium chloride into the ester solution
Heat would be produced as the surface of the conical flask feels warm.
Anhydrous calcium chloride crystals would clump up after swirling.
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Carboxylic acid would react with alcohol to produce ester and water molecules. The alcohol and carboxylic acid used in the experiment are organic chemicals. Carboxylic acid are very polar carboxyl group and alcohol are very polar hydroxyl group therefore the carboxylic acid and alcohol are very soluble in water. This however only applies to the lower member of the carboxylic acid and alcohol group. This is because the the lower member is a very polar molecule therefore the very polar alcohol/carboxylic acid would react with the very polar water molecules. In this experiment, 1-butanol is slightly soluble in water but ethanoic acid is very soluble in water. The reason why the higher members which is 1-butanol in this case have non-polar and polar bond and they are only slightly soluble in water is because the non-polar 1-butanol is dominant to the very polar water molecule, hence making it a non-polar …show more content…
When the solution reaches equilibrium, there would still be a large amount of reactants left. After the reflux, the ester solution produced would be poured into a bottle, this is when a dense smoke could be seen, this is because a hot ester is very volatile, this is when some ester solution would evaporate away, resulting in the poor yield of the ester solution. Another reason why the amount of ester gotten is so little is that the reaction is reversible therefore the reaction would not go to completion. The final reason resulting to the poor yield of ester produced is that during the isolation process where the ester solution is washed, some ester would be lost as some of the ester solution might be removed together with the organic