Chemical Forums
Chemistry Forums for Students => Organic Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: Sis290025 on September 12, 2006, 06:48:22 AM
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Why is biphenyl soluble in methanol? I thought that nonpolar solutes dissolve in nonpolar solvents. (Biphenyl is nonpolar while methanol is not, so why does solubility occur?)
In my text, it states that alcohols of any size are soluble in organic solvents. Why is this exactly true? In an experiment, I found methanol to be miscible in hexane, but, if I did not to do this, I would have thought that methanol would be immisible on account of its polarity.
Thank you.
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Hexane does not show much solubility in Methanol but better in IPA. That is why a lot of Chrial HPLC conditions employ hexane-IPA as the eluant.
You are right Biphenyl is not very polar and you'd expect it to be perhaps more soluble in pentane as you have learnt like dissolves like but don't take it to the extreme and think everything fits the path. This is just a general statement to aid the learning of polarity. As you said doing an experiment will help you also if you have a little bit of hexane in loads of methanol it will dissolve. I just tried mixing 500 uL of MeOH with 500uL with hexane and it does not mix!!! Try it for yourself. But if you tried the same replacing methanol with DCM, EtOAC or acetone for example the hexane will mix quite happily with these less polar solvents.
I don't know what text you are reading saying alcohols of any size dissolve in organic solvents as thats just so nonsense. I suggest you consult a better text book if you are learning organic chemistry.
R
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I agree with the second person. Haxane can't dissolve in Methanol.