Benzoic Acid Recrystallization

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This experiment demonstrated how to purify benzoic acid by means of recrystallization. The original benzoic acid solid sample used contained 5% salicylic acid, an impurity. Benzoic acid is of the following structure:

Salicylic is of the following structure:

For part 1, after boiling and dissolving benzoic acid in water, we allowed the solution to cool and recrystallize, first at air temperature and then on ice. As the solution cooled at air temperature, the benzoic acid started to recrystallize, with a rather gel-like appearance. As the solution cooled on ice, the benzoic acid further recrystallized, becoming more of a solid. Filtering the crystals by vacuum filtration separated the salicylic acid out from the benzoic acid, separating the …show more content…

After boiling and dissolving 0.993 grams of benzoic acid in 100 mL of water, we allowed it to again cool at air temperature and then on ice. However, this time, it did not crystallize at all as it cooled at air temperature. Although, on ice, the benzoic acid did end up with a small amount of crystals that formed on the bottom of the beaker. After filtering the salicylic acid from the benzoic acid, the remaining crystals of benzoic acid were in rather crumbled …show more content…

When we put the 0.1% ferric chloride with our solution from part 1, it did not visually change to a purple color. The spectrometer gave us a wavelength reading of 7 nm. When we put the 0.1% ferric chloride with our solution from part 2, there was a slight visual change in color, having a slight purple tint to it. The spectrometer gave us a wavelength reading of 4 nm. Since both parts of the experiment gave a wavelength reading greater than 0, this also indicates the presence of impurities in the recovered benzoic acid.

Post-Lab Questions:

1. From the trends in the data, seek to draw conclusions about the following variations in the procedure and how they affect the yield and the purity of the recovered benzoic acid.
a. a larger solvent volume, b. a smaller solvent volume, c. a more rapid cooling time.

I averaged all of the temperature ranges from the first part of the experiment and found this to be 107-113oC, with an average percent yield of

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