Branford, CT 2017
After a reaction is run chemists need to isolate the desired product from the reaction solvent and by-products. One way to do this is to partition the reaction mixture between two immiscible solvents, in this case water and ethyl acetate. You can shake both solvents in this funnel, and allow the layers to separate, much like oil and water separate. The product of interest is more soluble in ethyl acetate, so it is extracted into that solvent. Hopefully the water dissolves all the other impurities and is easily removed. The extract is being dried here to remove some traces of water, before the solvent is evaporated as shown in an earlier post. Most times my extractions are colorful like above. When I'm lucky, they look very clean as below.
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