4-Nitroaniline Lab Report

4-nitroaniline had a percent recovery of 18.67% and naphthalene had a percent recovery of 80%. Naphthalene had a relatively high percent recovery, and the loss of product can be explained by error inherent. The low percent recovery of 4-nitroaniline is mainly due to the fact that anhydrous sodium sulfate was accidently added to the flask. Therefore, some product was lost as the aqueous solution with the protonated 4-nitroaniline reacted with the drying agent. However, more errors to explain the results will be discussed later. 4-nitroaniline had a melting point of 147.1℃-154.1℃. The experimentally determined melting point is comparable to the literature value of 146℃-150℃ as defined by Merck Millipore. However, the melting point range was quite broad with a span of
A perfect percent recovery will never happen because of error inherent. After the bottom layer of naphthalene was removed from the conical vial, the remaining top layer was left in the vial. There is some loss of product there. It would be an improvement in percent recovery to add the left over top layer to the flask, but this may result in an increase in impurities in the compound extracted if the bottom layer was not cleanly removed. There is also product lost as the 4-nitroaniline and the naphthalene are transferred from their respective Erlenmeyer flasks to the vial or the Buchner funnel. Not all of the products from the flasks will be removed, so there is loss there. To improve this, multiple trials of the extraction process should be conducted to average out the actual percent recovery. Another improvement would be to test more mixtures of 4-nitroaniline and naphthalene of varying ratios and compare the percent recovery and melting points of those compounds extracted. This will allow for a comparison to the 1:1 mixture and clarify the success of extraction possible depending on the composition