Fast reactions to produce esters, known for their use in perfumes and in the pleasant odors of fruit and spices, are desirable for the undergraduate curriculum.  Techniques such as acid/base extraction, drying with MgSO4, and TLC analysis can be learned. A faster reaction is allowed by heat gun heating, enabling students to wash the product mixture with aqueous acid/base solutions to purify the product ester from basic catalyst and acid starting material. Faster reaction times allow students to accomplish multiple experiments in a given laboratory, expanding their appreciation of the different scents that ester compounds have to offer. Finally, many acetate esters made using these conditions are small enough in molecular weight to analyze with the Vernier mini-GC system, interpret with LabQuest data acquisition and conduct peak analysis in LoggerPro3 software program.  Having both GC and IR data allows the ester purity to be evaluated.

Micro-scale ester synthesis with a heat gun

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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