In: Chemistry
in the hydrolysis of ethyl benzoate, describe what reagents you would use to isolate the product form the starting material:
Hydrolysis of ethyl benzoate:
Ethyl benzoate + Hydrolysis -----> Benzoic acid + ethanol
Now, we need to find the reagent that separates the benzoic acid from the ethyl benzoate (starting material).
Benzoic acid in alkaline condition, it forms sodium benzoate, which is soluble in water. Therefore, we can use sodium bicarbonate to deprotonate the benzoic acid. The deprotonated benzoic acid will go into water.but the ethyl benzoate will stay in organic phase. With extraction method, we can separate the sodium benzoate from ethylbenzoate. After the separation of sodium benzoate, we can regenerate the benzoic acid with dilute HCl.
Therefore, NaHCO3 is used to isolate the benzoic acid from the starting material.