Performing organic syntheses and reaction work-ups are essential experiences in the organic chemistry curriculum. However, traditional liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) in the undergraduate lab takes a significant amount of time, as well as cost due to use and disposal of solvent and purchase and replacement costs of separatory funnels or microscale glassware.
Carthage College student Michael Regotti and Associate Professor of Chemistry David Brownholland wanted to see if there was a better way after learning about Faster Chemistry’s FastWoRX products. They presented their progress on the development of a new undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory experiment utilizing FastWoRX-M at the American Chemical Society’s National Meeting in Orlando, Florida on April 1, 2019.
In this experiment, students conducted a traditional reduction reaction of 9-fluorenone to 9-fluorenol using sodium borohydride, monitored by TLC.
After the reaction completed, students either extracted the product using traditional liquid-liquid extraction or FastWoRX-M. Students in both groups successfully recovered enough product for characterization and both procedures took a similar amount of time. Professor Brownholland found this latter point particularly impressive considering that this was the first time the students had used FastWoRX-M after having repeatedly done liquid-liquid extractions.
Learning objectives were equivalent between the two groups, but the students using FastWoRX-M reported having a much more enjoyable and interesting experience.