Katie Anderson

Lab Partner- Akua Obeng

10.23.18 Chemistry 3106-302
TA- Chitranjan Srivastav
Unknown Organic Compounds (part II)

Purpose: The purpose of this experiment is to determine the unknown compound.

Reaction and Physical Properties:

No reaction.

Safety: Many of the compounds used as unknowns in this experiment are hazardous chemicals. As always you
should be wearing your PPE that includes your goggles, lab coat, and gloves. Be careful about touching anything
you care about (your face, your phone, your computer, etc.) with your gloves while you work in lab to avoid
chemical contamination. When disposing of chemicals, you should still be wearing your PPE including your gloves.

Procedure:
Copper Sulfate Test
Amines (including ammonia) will give a blue-green colored precipitate upon their treatment with copper sulfate in
this test.
On a spot plate add 7-10 drops of Cu(SO4) (10%, aq) followed by 10 mg of solid or 1 drop of liquid unknown. Mix
with stirring rod or pipet and observe any changes to the solution.
Bromine Water
Arylamino halides can be prepared from aromatic amines, as they can undergo electrophilic aromatic substitution
(EAS) upon treatment with bromine.
In a small test-tube add the unknown. Add 2 drops of the liquid, or 10 mg of the solid followed by 1.5 mL of water.
Confirm and record the pH of the solution. Add the bromine water solution in the fume hood until the color of the
bromine solutions persists. Does a precipitation form? What is the pH at this stage?
A positive test can be confirmed by the observation of the decolorization of the bromine, followed by the
formation of a white precipitate. The resulting solution may have a pH of less than 7.
Observation: The IR for the solid revealed an amine is present, so a copper sulfate test was used and gave a
positive result, but when the bromine water test was administered the test came back as negative. The IR for the
liquid revealed an amine is present, so a copper sulfate test was used and gave a negative result beacause it
formed a solid that was the same color as the unknown liquid, but when the bromine water test was administered
the test came back as positive with a pH of 3.

Calculations:
There are no calculations.

Conclusions: In this portion of the experiment we tested both the liquid and the solid for amines. We chose to
test for amines based on their IR spectra’s. The solid provided a positive copper sulfate test, but a negative
bromine water test which means that there is an amine present, but it’s not an aromatic amine. The liquid
provided a negative copper sulfate test, but a positive bromine water test which means that the liquid has an
aromatic amine present. Based on the new knowledge that the solid is an amine and the melting point alone the
only possible amine that the solid could be is 4-Chloroaniline, but it has not been proven that it is 4-Chloroaniline
yet. Based on the boiling point and the knowledge that the liquid is an amine, the liquid could only be N-
Ethylaniline or 2-Chloroaniline, but it is still unknown which of the two compounds it could be, or if those are the
only two possible compounds.

Post-Lab Questions:
There are no post-lab questions.