Question

In the Diels Alder Reaction of a Diene Found in Eucalyptus Oil lab:
1. Answer the questions associated with the following steps of the proceudre:

Step 5: After additng eucalyptus oil, anhydrous diethyl ether, and maleic anhydride to the mocrovial, a jacketed condenser is attached to the microvial and clamped to a ring stand. The mixture is placed in the aluminum block and gently refluxed for 45 minutes.
What is the function of the jacketed condenser?

Step 9: After the solution is removed after refluxing, allowed to cool to room temperature, and placed in an ice bath, the crystals were filtered onto a Buchner funnel.
Why do we use a Buchner funnel to filter the crystals? Could we simply have used gravity filtration? Explain.

Step 11: While filtering the crystals on the Buchner funnel, was the collected crystals with the cold petroleum ether and allow to air dry.
Why do we cool the petroleum ether before using it to rinse the obtained crystals?

Answer 1

1.The purpose of the vacuum jacket is to provide insulation of the column from cooling by ambient lab air. You don't want to have to heat the "pot" any more than you have to, otherwise heat sensitive material in the pot may degrade and turn to tar. A condenser is an apparatus used to condense In the laboratory, in direct contact with the jacket's cooling water, the glass tube carrying vapors from the distillation flask.

2.A Büchner funnel is a piece of laboratory equipment used in filtration. It is traditionally made of porcelain funnel with a perforated plate, filtration material in the form of filter paper is placed on the plate,The suction allows the wet recrystallized compound to dry out such that the pure dried crystal compound is left remaining.

3.Petroleum ether is a solvent, which means that does not react with the product of the reaction. We cooled the solvent that way it is at the same temperature of the crystals there for will not dissolve the crystals. If we add a hot solvent to the crystals we will dissolve the crystal, which we don’t want. Hot solvent also can be applied to remove impurities that we don’t want as a final product but since crystal fairly pure according to standards hot solvent it not the approach.