Trimyristin Synthesis Lab Report

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This experiment is based on being able to properly isolate/purify trimyristin from nutmeg and synthesize myristic acid from trimyristin. Liquid-solid extraction and recrystallization are the techniques used to isolate/purify the trimyristin from nutmeg. Base hydrolysis is the technique used to synthesize the myristic acid from trimyristin. Isolating trimyristin from nutmeg is considered natural product chemistry. Natural product chemistry involves isolating organic compounds from living things, such as plants (Weldegirma 2016). Usually, natural product chemistry is complicated, intensive, and tedious. However, the isolation of trimyristin is not very difficult because a large portion of nutmeg is made up of trimyristin. Trimyristin is a unique triglyceride, as all three of its fatty acid groups are identical. …show more content…

The trimyristin is isolated from the nutmeg through liquid-solid extraction. Liquid-solid extraction involves making the nutmeg go from its solid phase, to its liquid phase. Diethyl ether was the solvent which was used to turn the nutmeg into its liquid state, which is trimyristin. Once in the liquid phase, it is filtered through a pipette stuffed with cotton, sand, and anhydrous sodium sulfate. Only the trimyristin is able to pass through the pipette, which lets it be isolated and collected. Once the trimyristin has been isolated, recrystallization is then utilized to purify the crude trimyristin (Weldegirma 2016). After the trimyristin has been properly purified, hydrolysis is used to synthesize myristic acid. Esters can undergo acid-base hydrolysis, which involves a nucleophile interacting with a present carbonyl group. Acid-base hydrolysis can be used on esters to make it so that the leaving group can be removed and the desired group

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