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Registered Member #4274
Joined: Mon Dec 19 2011, 03:10AM
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Our high school concurrent credit chemistry II (organics) class recently began our esters experiment, and in a rush to choose an ester, I chose methyl benzoate. Methyl benzoate is kind of an odd ester with a smell “strongly reminiscent of the fruit of the feijoa tree.†Getting to the details, we used stoichiometry to find the amount of chemicals required. The reaction involved 2ml sulfuric acid as the catalyst, 8.9g benzoic acid for the carboxylic acid, and 2.3g Methanol for the primary alcohol. Since there was no where near enough liquid to wet the benzoic acid, we purposely overshot and used 40ml of methanol (31.6 g). I don’t remember exactly what the reasoning was, but it made sense. Anyway, we boiled our ester for a few hours and transferred it to a 400mL beaker, neutralized the acid with sodium bicarbonate and transferred it to a seperatory funnel. The strange thing is that there are 3 layers in the funnel. Liquid on top (water), solid middle layer, and a small bottom layer which we think is our ester. We are not sure what the middle layer is, and that’s the problem we would like to figure out. Density of Water: 1g/cm^3 Density of Ester: 1.08g/cm^3 Density of Methanol: 0.79c/cm^3 Density of Benzoic Acid: 1.27g/cm^3 We think the problem may have possibly come from impure benzoic acid, lack of catalyst, not enough boiling time, sabotage? A student from the previous class made the same ester, and he says the benzoic acid used was the same for both of us, and he did not have the three layers. That class also used 3ml of sulfuric acid vs. our class’s 2ml. I don’t think the catalyst would be the problem since the rest of the class’s esters turned out fine (I think), and I hope it wasn’t sabotage because that would just be evil. Anyway, thanks for your help!
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Esters Experiment
