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Experiment 3 Separation And Identification Of Organic Unknowns

Decent Essays

Alfred Lee 01/31/2015 TA: Zhixun Wang Friday 5:00PM

Discussion – Experiment 3A: Separation and Identification of Organic Unknowns
Unknown #1

Extraction is a separation method that utilizes differences in solubility to separate compounds (1). The purpose of this experiment was to separate three different organic compounds using extraction and then to identify them by using infrared (IR) spectroscopy.

An extraction was carried out on a 750-mg solid mixture containing an acidic, neutral, and basic unknown. In part 1 the solid mixture was first dissolved in 10mL of diethyl ether and then two 10-mL portions of 3M NaOH were added in order to isolate the acidic unknown. In part 2 the same procedure was repeated using 3M HCl in order to isolate the basic unknown. In part 3, the remaining ether solution was washed with brine and dried with anhydrous sodium sulfate, then heated in order to drive off the ether and isolate the neutral unknown. …show more content…

The added HCl protonated the basic functional group, giving the basic group a positive charge, which enabled it to dissolve in the aqueous layer to be drained and isolated. Both the acidic and basic unknowns were dried by vacuum filtration for 10-minutes. The neutral solution, dissolved in the organic diethyl ether solvent, was washed with brine to draw out water and dried with anhydrous sodium sulfate. The organic solution was decanted into a beaker and the solvent was boiled off gently. The results of the experiment – mass recovered, percent recovery, and melting range – are summarized

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