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Recently I did a distillation. At a certain point an azeotropic mixture of alcohol, water and toluene evaporated and was caught in a beaker with anhydrous potassium carbonate. I had to shake it and then pour it back into the reaction mixture (while filtering out the solid).

Why did I have to catch it in a $\ce{K2CO3}$-mixture?

(The product was diethyladipate)

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    $\begingroup$ Was it simply a drying agent? I can't imagine it reacting with one of the solvents... $\endgroup$
    – Cat123
    Nov 8, 2014 at 11:53
  • $\begingroup$ Welcome to Chemistry.SE! To acquaint yourself with this page, take the tour and visit the help center. Furthermore this tutorial shows you how math and chemical formulae can be nicely formatted on this site. $\endgroup$
    – Philipp
    Nov 8, 2014 at 13:47

1 Answer 1

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The synthesis you are referring to is outlined here. Potassium Carbonate acts as a drying agent as you said as the later part of the distillation requires a specific temperature to remove the toluene and alcohol.

The water comes from the concentrated sulphuric acid solution added with apidic acid. The residue is also rinsed with alcohol which is a strong indicator that water needs to be removed.

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