Why is diethyl ether used to extract an organic product from water at the end of a reaction?
1 Answer
Because ether is volatile.................
Explanation:
The normal boiling point of diethyl ether is
Now ether is quite a volatile solvent. If it is placed under suction (i.e. on a rotary evaporator), you can strip all the ether off quite rapidly. You are left with the crude product, which can be recrystallized or distilled.
Had you tried to strip off water, you would be there for hours........Moreover, most organic materials have quite good solubility in ether solution. Once in the separating funnel, the organic phase can be