Into the Lab

Today marked the start of what I have been looking forward to for so long:  my first official day of undergraduate research.  After Dr. Van Horn finished her lectures for the day, we headed into her research lab to begin my first project:  the mCPBA oxidation of cyclohexanone by a Baeyer-Villiger reaction.

This is kind of like a practice for what I will be doing next week hopefully; the chemicals necessary for the reaction I will be running still haven't come in yet.  The reaction follows a very similar, if not the same, procedure though so I will be extra prepared for when the chemicals do come in.  The products I am making will still be used by Dr. Van Horn and other researchers for other projects that are being done, so my time is not being wasted.

The reaction scale we used today started with 5 grams of cyclohexanone (1 eq.) to 1.3 eq of active mCPBA.  The mCPBA we used was 77% pure, as 100% mCPBA is very dangerous.  After calculations, this resulted in 9.3 grams of mCPBA.

For our procedure, I massed out 5 grams of cyclohexanone, added it to a 300 round bottom flask, and dissolved it in 50 mL of dichloromethane using a stir bar on the stir plate.  After massing out 9.3 grams of mCPBA, it was added in small scoops to the mixture over a 30 minute period.  The mCPBA was not added in its entirety because it reacts with the mixture right as it is added and gets slightly frothy at the top of the liquid, so we wanted to prevent the solution spilling out of the RBF.

The mCPBA and cyclohexanone need to react overnight, so the solution was left on the stir plate and the procedure will be continued tomorrow.  So far, things have been running pretty smoothly; I'm excited for what's next!