CHM 1321 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Sodium Borohydride, Borohydride, Limiting Reagent

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Chemistry
• Course: CHM 1321
• Professor: Greg Flynn

Document Summary

Refer to experiment 4: stereochemical analysis of the reduction of benzyl, in the. Organic chemistry 1 laboratory manual for chm1321 course in the winter session of 2014 at the university of ottawa. Exceptions: 100ml round bottom flask was used instead of a 50 ml erlenmeyer flask in step one. An ice bath was not used in step 3. A heat mantle was used to heat the flask in the first reaction. Ice was used in step 10 to cool the flask. The benzil was placed within the ethanol simply for the purpose of alcohol being a solvent for the reaction. The benzil and ethanol were heated in order for the benzil to fully dissolve within the ethanol. Ethanol is a good choice of a solvent because its boiling point is lower than benzils melting point and therefore does not display oiling out. The sodium borohydride was added to be a reducing agent which converts ketones into alcohols.