Final Study Flashcards
What are the name and chemical formulas for common drying agents?
Sodium Sulfate - Na2SO4 - Most common. Absorbs a large amount of water, less accuracy than Mg.
Magnesium Sulfate - MgSO4 - magnesium ion is a strong lewis acid
Calcium Chloride - Ca2Cl2 - absorbs methanol/ethanol too
Potassium Carbonate - K2CO3 - base, used for drying basic substances (e.g. amines)
Benzoic Acid lab: Why did we add Na2SO4 to a solution?
Organic solvents like ether always take up a small amount of water.
How do you figure out how much drying agent to add to solutions?
Add in small chunks until it starts ‘chunking’ (swirls when you mix it)
Caffeine Lab: What is important to remember about caffeine?
It sublimes (not evaporate)
Other flavenoids have
Caffeine Lab (Chicago House):
What did we do in this lab? (concise)
What did we do in this lab? (detailed)
What are the components to remember?
Concise: Start with caffeine and impurities > ionize impurities with sodium carbonate > Separate impurities from caffeine with DCM + H2O > Sublime caffeine to purify
Detailed: Extracted caffeine by:
Heat tea bag to hydrolize tannins into gallic acid
Squeeze as much out of tea bag as possible
Add sodium carbonate to deprotonate gallic acids and tannins
Add methylene chloride to grab caffeine + chlorophylls + trace alkaloids
Add drying agent (Na2SO4) to get water out
- Evaporate* to get DCM out
- Sublime* to purify completely
Get weight, MP, % rec
Caffeine lab: What is the main component of tea leaves? What is its solubility with water like?
Cellulose.
Insoluble in water.
Presents no problems in isolation procedure.
Caffeine: how did we separate it from the other flavinoids?
Has methyl groups all around it
These methyl groups can’t be deprotonated, so caffeine can’t be ionized
Took advantage of this with sodium carbonate (Na2SO4)
Caffeine lab: What is the class of compounds used to tan leather called?
What properties do they have in common?
What happens when they are hydrolyzed?
What can they precipitate?
Tannins.
Properties: Phenol groups with MW 500-3000.
Two classes - those that can be hydrolized and those that can’t
Hydrolized: Those that are hydrolyzed yield glucose, gallic acid
Precipitate: They precipitate alkaloids (e.g. caffeine!) and proteins from aqueous solutions
Caffeine lab: What happens when tannins are extracted into hot water?
Tannins are acidic, so:
They hydrolize to form free gallic acid
Caffeine lab: What is sodium carbonate?
What does it do in the caffeine lab?
It’s a base.
Converts tannins to water-soluble sodium salts
(So, it can deprotonate phenol groups)
More basic than bicarbonate, less basic than hydroxide
Caffeine lab: Is caffeine soluble in water?
What about DCM?
Why is this important?
Yes
BUT: way more soluble in DCM.
This means that tannin / gallic acid salts (made by sodium carbonate) go to H2O, most of caffeine to DCM.
Caffeine lab: Why is tea brown?
How is this important?
Flavonoid pigments, chloryphyls, and their oxidation products
Important because flavonoids are not soluble in methylene chloride
But chloryphylls are
Caffeine lab: You’ve added sodium carbonate to make tannins/gallic acid salts.
You’ve added DCM and H2O to separate.
What is in the DCM? What is in water?
How do you purify?
DCM: Nearly pure caffeine. Has some chlorophylls (crude caffeine).
Water: Tannins (salt), sodium carbonate, flavonoids?, gallic acid (salt)
Purify with sublimation
Caffeine lab: How do you purify the crude caffeine?
What is physically important to do?
Sublimate it.
You need reduced pressure
(At air pressure, it just decomposes)
Caffeine lab: What machine did we use to sublimate the caffeine? How does it work?
Caffeine lab: What is a carcinogen? What is a toxic compound?
What compound is suspected of being one?
What else is problematic about this compound?
Why is this relevant?
What is less toxic (but can’t extract caffeine as efficiently)?
Carcinogen: cancer-causing agent. Toxic: Chemical that can injure biological tissue.
Compound: DCM
Problematic: It’s also an environmental pollutant
Relevance: Need to be careful with methylene chloride, dispose in halogenated waste
Other compound like DCM: Ethyl acetate.
Caffeine lab procedure: Why did we heat the water? What happens?
So tannins would be hydrolized.
They form gallic acid
Sublimation: What is sublimation?
What labs is it relevant to?
When would something sublime?
What: Compounds going directly into gas phase from solid
Labs: We sublimed in caffeine lab to purify caffeine
Dry ice was subliming in benzoic acid lab when we added it to the grignard
When: Sublimation would occur when melting point of a compound is above atmospheric pressure (so it turns to gas at a pressure lower than the melting point, when it’s still a solid)
Sublimation: What do you do in the lab to get sublimation to happen?
You make a vacuum.
The vacuum effectively makes air pressure (‘appiled pressure’) disappear, causing both the boiling temperature to decrease and the melting point to decrease.
If the applied pressure is lower than the melting point pressure, then the compound will sublime before it melts.
Caffeine lab: What is it called when there are drops in solution that look like vesicles between two solvents?
Where do you see it and why?
How do you prevent them?
What: Emulsion (drops of immiscible solvent B floating around in A)
Where: See after adding DCM while liquids are separating
Prevent:
Keep it still
Add NaCl (moves water)
Centrifuge it
Swirl in separatory funnel
Caffeine lab: What is in the mixture after adding both Na2CO3 and DCM?
Why do we centrifuge at this point?
Aqueous: Tannins (salt), Gallic Acid, Na+, carbonic acid (from NaCO3 protonating), flavonoids. H2O, Na2CO3,
DCM: Caffeine, chlorophylls (e.g. trace alkaloids)
Why centrifuge: To break emulsion between DCM/aq.
Caffeine lab: Why do we need to add DCM multiple times after centrifuging?
Based on the distribution coefficient, some caffeine will remain in the aqueous layer.
We add DCM multiple times to get more of it out efficiently.
Caffeine: We’ve extracted an organic layer with DCM and caffeine 3x.
Now what?
Need to get trace H2O out.
Add drying agent (Sodium Sulfate Na2SO4)
Caffeine lab: We have purified caffeine that has been dried out. What do we need to do now? How do we do it?
Get the DCM out by evaporating it.
Use rotovap to do this (lowers pressure to evaporate out liquid)
Caffeine lab: What were we purifying by subliming at the end?
What did we do to sublime?
Why does it work?
Getting trace alkaloids out.
We assembled sublimation apparatus with cold finger/vacuum and heated bottom of RBF
(?) Works because the alkaloids don’t sublime at low pressures?
Caffeine lab: What is a distribution coefficient (K)?
What: A ratio describing the distribution of concentrations of a solute in two solvents.
K=C2/C1
Where C1 and C2 are concentrations at equilibrium in g/l or mg/ml