thats not the best way to do this reaction nor will the butyl acetate store well since you didnt purify out the trace bicarb and water (meaning it will hydrolyze in storage) i must say the amount of reagents you used is quite odd, 19.4% v/v sulfuric acid as a catalyst is excessive and will decrease yield (as seen by the reaction mixture turning very dark yellow, should usually stay nearly colorless to slight yellow but not that much) you only have 0.72mol of butanol but 0.87mol of acetic acid?? normally an excess of alcohol is preferred, after running the thermodynamic calculations 5 hours is a ridiculous excess and will lead to degradation of your product by the excess sulfuric acid as well as general hydrolysis of the acetate i recommend if you do a future run to do a reactive distillation with an excess of butanol rather than acetic acid, a reactive distillation is simply just a fractional distillation but you turn the temperature up until your desired product distills over, this shifts the reaction towards the butyl acetate and you can get up to 99% yields and 99.8% purity according to some literature i found, the resulting acetate also shouldnt need washing either so you wont need to worry about decomposition
Excess alcohol might not always be desired, as n-butanol is poorly soluble in water, and extraction/washing of the butyl acetate won't remove the excess in the aqueous phase. If he was using methanol/ethanol, then yes they can easily be removed by water washings. Excess acid (acetic) can easily be neutralized by washing with NaHCO3 solution, as it's shown. Distillation would be easier if there's not a excess of alcohol (azeotropes could form)
well it still is weird how much excess sulfuric was used and the fact the ratio between alcohol and acid was near 1:1 anyways, its just a very odd selection pf reagents but yeah it depends what you make and the properties of the reagents
thats not the best way to do this reaction nor will the butyl acetate store well since you didnt purify out the trace bicarb and water (meaning it will hydrolyze in storage)
i must say the amount of reagents you used is quite odd, 19.4% v/v sulfuric acid as a catalyst is excessive and will decrease yield (as seen by the reaction mixture turning very dark yellow, should usually stay nearly colorless to slight yellow but not that much) you only have 0.72mol of butanol but 0.87mol of acetic acid?? normally an excess of alcohol is preferred, after running the thermodynamic calculations 5 hours is a ridiculous excess and will lead to degradation of your product by the excess sulfuric acid as well as general hydrolysis of the acetate
i recommend if you do a future run to do a reactive distillation with an excess of butanol rather than acetic acid, a reactive distillation is simply just a fractional distillation but you turn the temperature up until your desired product distills over, this shifts the reaction towards the butyl acetate and you can get up to 99% yields and 99.8% purity according to some literature i found, the resulting acetate also shouldnt need washing either so you wont need to worry about decomposition
Excess alcohol might not always be desired, as n-butanol is poorly soluble in water, and extraction/washing of the butyl acetate won't remove the excess in the aqueous phase. If he was using methanol/ethanol, then yes they can easily be removed by water washings.
Excess acid (acetic) can easily be neutralized by washing with NaHCO3 solution, as it's shown. Distillation would be easier if there's not a excess of alcohol (azeotropes could form)
well it still is weird how much excess sulfuric was used and the fact the ratio between alcohol and acid was near 1:1 anyways, its just a very odd selection pf reagents but yeah it depends what you make and the properties of the reagents
kul dont think its the best way to make butyl acetate but kul