ERIC Number: EJ1443334
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-Jan
Pages: 5
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0021-9584
EISSN: EISSN-1938-1328
Conversion of Adipic Acid to Bis-2-ethylhexyl Adipate Overcoming Equilibrium Constraints: A Laboratory Experiment
Journal of Chemical Education, v100 n1 p361-365 2023
An adipic acid esterification experiment suitable for graduate students has been developed to describe the industrial manufacture of plasticizers. Students first follow the progress of the reaction with simple acid/base titration enabling measurement of the acid number. During the workup of the reaction mixture, they learn how to manage the filtration of a viscous mixture over an inert support such as Celite and practice on atmospheric and vacuum distillations. They finally learn to set a mass balance on 2-ethylhexanol using fully experimental data from their own reactions. To this end, they also learn how to retrieve from a [superscript 1]H NMR spectrum the required data to evaluate the purity and the yield of bis-2-ethylhexyl adipate. These tasks corroborate basic concepts related to the tools available to shift the equilibrium in reversible reactions, at the same time providing new knowledge on mass balance calculations and [superscript 1]H NMR.
Descriptors: Laboratory Experiments, Science Experiments, Graduate Students, Science Instruction, Chemistry, Plastics, Manufacturing, Industry
Division of Chemical Education, Inc. and ACS Publications Division of the American Chemical Society. 1155 Sixteenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 800-227-5558; Tel: 202-872-4600; e-mail: eic@jce.acs.org; Web site: http://pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A