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Banana Oil Synthesis Report Essays

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aMicroscale Synthesis of Isopentyl Acetate (Banana Oil)
Objective: Carried out the microscale synthesis of isopentyl acetate by direct esterification of acetic acid and isopentyl alcohol. This was an acid catalyzed Fischer esterification. Both extraction and distillation were employed to obtain a pure product. IR spectroscopy and gas chromatography were used to determine purity of the final product.
Reagents:
* Compound: | * MW (g/mol): | * MP (°C): | * BP (°C): | * Density (g/mL): | * Properties/ Safety: | * Isopentyl AlcoholC5H12O | * 88.15 | * -117.0 | * 132.0 | * 0.81 | * Clear, colorless liquid, disagreeable odor, flammable. Hazardous in case of skin, eye contact and ingestion and inhalation. …show more content…

Table 1: Figure 1 summary: IR spectrum isopentyl acetate: Peak (cm-1) | Corresponding Bond: | 2959.98 | C-H | 2872.89 | C-H | 1743.38 | C=O (Ester) | 1244.50 | C-O |

Gas Chromatography (GC) Results:
The GC resulted in one peak determined to be 100% isopentyl acetate based on comparing to the results of a known sample of isopentyl acetate which had a similar peak after a retention time of 1.5 minutes. Refer to figure 4 for results summarized below.
Table 2: Figure 4 GC Summary: Retention Time (min) | Area | % Composition | Identity | 1.525 | 1.7 x 107 | 100% | Isopentyl acetate |

NMR spectrum of typical isopentyl acetate sample is also shown in figure 3a.
Discussion:
This sulfuric acid catalyzed Fischer esterification reaction used excess acetic acid reacted with isopentyl alcohol to create isopentyl acetate. Because the reaction is reversible it was necessary to use excess acetic acid to drive the reaction forward and favor the formation of product in accordance with Le

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