Abstract
Ethyl alcohol is a widely used relatively nontoxic solvent. It forms an azeotrope with water, which contains 95.5% of the alcohol. Some chemical transformations require anhydrous ethanol as reagent or solvent. A number of large-scale procedures have been developed for the preparation of anhydrous ethanol. Among these, the main procedure is based on rectification of a mixture of ethanol, water, and benzene [1, 2]; it ensures isolation of 99.9% ethanol. On a laboratory scale, most water can be removed from 95.5% commercially available ethanol by prolonged heating over calcium oxide and subsequent distillation [3, 4]. In such a way 99.5% ethanol is obtained. Further dehydration of ethanol containing 0.1 to 0.5% of water may be accomplished using metallic magnesium [3, 4] or sodium and diethyl oxalate or [3] diethyl phthalate [5]. We propose a simple and convenient procedure for dehydration of ethanol on a laboratory scale with the use of accessible reagents, bypassing preliminary dehydration of commercial ethanol.
Published Version
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