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Adipic acid via oxidation of cyclohexanone - Video Tutorial

video to adipic acid a six carbon double carboxylic acid we're going to use potassium permanganate as


the oxidizing agent first we wanted to check out just how exothermic this reaction could be given


that permanganate can be a very powerful oxidizing agent here's some potassium permanganate and a few


drops of meat cyclone hexanone the good news is that it's not hyperbolic


there is no spontaneous ignition let's give it a helping hand


we're going to have to tame this oxidation process and do it with some care so


here's our set up we're using the 500 ml flasks and we've got stirred bar and


thermometer in there


We can carefully monitor the temperature.


We're going to use 150 ml of water as a solvent to perform the reaction in.


Since our product is slightly soluble in water we have a difficult choice.


Too much water and our yields will be low.Too little and we could have a runaway reaction.


Let's get the water into the reaction flask.


We're using slightly warm water at 40 degrees because we want any reaction to kick off quickly


so we know where we stand with it.


Now for our oxidizing agent.


Here's 32 grams of potassium permanganate crystals.


This is a 2 molar ratio with the cyclohexanone we'll be using.


Here's our reaction flask stirring away.


Now we'll add the permanganate crystals to the water.


Not all of them will dissolve at this temperature, but that's okay.


Once they're all added, we measure out 0.5 grams of solid sodium hydroxide.


And we're going to make a solution using 5 ml of water.


The permangoni isn't going to react with the actual ketone group of our cyclohexanone.


Instead it's going to react with the double bond present in the phenol form of the ketone.


By adding a little alkali and raising the pH of the reaction mixture, we increase the


amount of phenol form and so hopefully catalyze the reaction a bit.


So we've added our sodium hydroxide solution and now we're ready.


Here's our cyclohexanone.


We've weighed out 10 grams into a small beaker.


Check out our previous video for more details of how we made this starting from cyclohexanol.


We're going to start off slow, so we're going to use a dropper to add the cyclohexanone


to the reaction mixture.


We're starting with about 3 quarters of a ml.


With stirring on vigorously we're just going to watch the temperature and see if we can


see a reaction.


It's starting to look like a real reaction.


It takes a few minutes, but we start to see a slow but steady increase.


There's slight brown tint appearing in the reaction mixture as well.


The reaction is slow, but it's pretty relentless.


After about 6 or 7 minutes the temperature had steadily climbed and was about 60 degrees


C.


So at this point we decided to apply some cooling to the flask.


We started with an ice pack.


We're going to add our sodium hydroxide solution.


But this didn't seem to have much of an effect.


So we used a bowl of ice water.


And at this point the reaction seemed to be finished.


And the temperature slowly came back down again.


So we added about another ml of the cyclohexanone to the reaction mixture.


This time we kept the flask in the cooling water.


Cool.


Cool.


Cool.


and after a few minutes the temperature started to rise again the second and


subsequent additions weren't as vigorous as the first and we managed to add all


of the cyclohexanone to the reaction mixture in four batches over about 40


minutes here's the reaction mixture at the end we allowed to stir for another


hour as it cooled down slowly to room temperature we added a drop of the


reaction mixture to a beaker containing water


no purple permanganate color so it looks like this shows over


here's the cooled reaction mixture lots of brown suspended manganese dioxide in


it.


so we set up for filtration to get rid of this


we've got a clear filtrate but it's a slightly red color we're pretty sure


this is due to a dirty filter as a consequence of our previous henry


reaction video the red color is very difficult to get rid of


to clean the flask and anything else that has come into contact with the


brown reaction mixture we prepared a strong solution of sodium bisulfite in


water the flask is a bit of a mess as you can see


but the bisulfite solution reduces the brown manganese dioxide and makes cleaning it much easier


and makes cleaning it much easier


left in the filter is a brown precipitate of manganese dioxide save this because you


can't turn it into active manganese dioxide which is a useful oxidizing agent


here's our filtrate yours should hopefully be nice and colorless if you


used a clear filter along with decomposition products and products of


side reactions this hopefully contains our added pick acid in the form of the sodium bicarbonate.


and potassium salt we're now going to add concentrated hydrochloric acid to this


in order to generate the acid there's a little effervescence which we assume is


because one of the oxidation byproducts would have been carbon dioxide which


would have been reacted with the alkali present to form a carbonate salt on


adding the acid the red color turns yellow


indicating that it is an impurity from the filter from our previous reaction


we've added about 10 mils of acid so let's test the pH strongly acidic so we'll assume at this


point that all our added pick acid is present in the solution is the free acid since the acid


is soluble in warm water but not very soluble in cold water we're going to


chill the mixture down now and see if our product crystallizes out after an


hour of chilling here we are there's a white crystalline precipitate in the


bottom of the beaker


so we set up for filtration again


we wash the product with a little ice water and then dried it thoroughly on


the pump


and here's our dry product 3.5 grams of Addie pick acid this is only a 24%


yield on the starting cyclone hexa known so it's possible that we haven't quite


got the reaction conditions right for the stoykyamotoxin


correct in addition some of the product will have stayed dissolved in the liquid


due to its solubility but it's nice and crystalline and seems


quite pure if you're going to try this reaction then be careful because even


though the reaction is slow it's difficult to control even with cooling


go very slowly and take extra care if you scale up


stay tuned to see what we've got planned for our adipic acid