Essay On Hydration Of Norbornene

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Hydration of alkenes is characterized by the addition of water and an acid-catalyst to a carbon-carbon bond leading to an alcohol. Dehydration is exactly the opposite in which dehydration of an alcohol requires water to be removed from the reactant. Equilibrium is established between the two processes when the rate of the forward reaction equals the rate of the reverse reaction. The alkene that is used in this experiment is norbornene. Through hydration of norbornene, an alcohol group should be present on the final product yielded what is known as exo-norborneol. Percent yield is a numerical indication of how much of the reactant was actually reacted to yield product. The equation for percent yield is shown below: percent yield=(actual yield)/(theoretical …show more content…

The theoretical weight was 599.6 mg. This yields a percent yield of 3.7%. Table 1 also illustrates the experimental melting point of 99.3-102.1◦C. A melting point that has a range larger than 3◦C is indicative of impurities in the sample. A few possibilities of impurities could have been unreacted norbornene, and water. Evidence that supports that there was unreacted norbornene in the final sample was the fact that the product was a jelly-like structure. Norbornene by itself has a jelly-like structure. However, once norbornene reacted with the acid-catalyst (H2O2), then it should have changed the chemical structure of the molecule and once the solution was brought back down to room temperature, crystals should have formed. Since a jelly-like, or oil-like product was present at the end of the reaction, then this is indicative that there was unreacted norbornene in the sample. The second impurity that may have been present in the final product was water. Instead of adding 3 mL of sodium bicarbonate and then 3 mL of brine, 3 mL of brine was added first and then 3 mL of sodium bicarbonate was added. This experimental error caused excess aqueous solution to be added to the diethyl ether. Since excess water was added to the final product, about 4x the amount of anhydrous sodium sulfate was needed in order to remove the water from the product. This was another indication that there was too much water in

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