Question

An experiment is performing the chlorination of chlorobutane. What should the reflux temperature be (approximately)?

The reflux mixture is 1,1'-azobis(cyclohexanenitrile) (ABCN) with 1-chlorobutane and sulfuryl chloride.

A: ~boiling point of 1-chlorobutane

B: ~100 C

C: ~40 C

D: ~boiling point of diethyl ether

Answer 1

Organic chemical reactions take place at very long time, and in order to speed up these reactions, temperature is applied to the reaction mixture. However, the organic compounds are usually simply with low boiling points. As such, most organic chemicals are quite volatile, and if heated they will evaporate and be lost. The solution to this problem is to heat the reaction mixture under reflux. Here we use continouco condensation of vaporized reactant by cold water at the top of the flask thus the reactants again comes to the reaction mixture and gives good yields. Thus here since 1-chlorobutane is the reactant with b pt of 78.5° C and Sulfuryl chloride has b pt of 64°C and ABCN has very large boiling point of 464°C. Thus we have to apply A~ b pt of 1-chlorobutane.