BRAINCAKEPractical Techniques in Organic Synthesis
Making an organic compound in the lab is only half the job: the crude product is always mixed with unreacted starting materials, by-products and solvent, so it must be purified and then its identity and purity checked.
OCR expects you to know the practical techniques for:
• carrying out the reaction: heating under reflux in Quickfit apparatus, so volatile reactants can be heated for a long time without escaping
• separating a liquid product: distillation, which also collects a volatile product as it forms; a separating funnel to remove an aqueous layer; drying with an anhydrous salt such as anhydrous MgSO4; and redistillation
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Key terms in this lesson
- recrystallisation
- Purification of a solid by dissolving it in the minimum volume of hot solvent and allowing pure crystals to form as it cools.
- filtration under reduced pressure
- Filtration using a Büchner funnel connected to a vacuum, which separates a solid from a liquid faster than gravity filtration and leaves it drier.
More in Organic Synthesis
- Quickfit Apparatus
- Filtration under Reduced Pressure
- Recrystallisation
- Melting Point Determination
- Identifying Functional Groups
- Aliphatic Synthetic Routes
- Aromatic Synthetic Routes
- Planning Multi-Stage Syntheses
All 9 lessons in Organic Synthesis · All OCR A-level Organic Chemistry topics