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Topic: Workup: removing acetic acid  (Read 11244 times)

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Offline mir

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Workup: removing acetic acid
« on: March 19, 2006, 02:40:17 PM »
I have a mixture of an highly activated phenol, acetic acid in ethyl acetate (20 mL). I have already removed most of the substrates. But how do I remove the acetic acid?

I tried washing the mixture with water, with no success. The mixture still contained much acetic acid, which was apperent as a strong smell after using the rotavapor. Im using wateraspirator to lower the pressure inside the rotavapor, so evaporating the acid is not possible without strong heating.

Any suggestions?
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Offline Yggdrasil

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Re:Workup: removing acetic acid
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2006, 05:15:55 PM »
Try washing with aqueous sodium bicarbonate.  The bicarbonate is a strong enough base to deprotonate the acetic acid and make it more water soluble, but it won't deprotonate the phenol, so the phenol will stay in the organic layer.

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