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Syntheising aspirin

aj47
in Organic Chemistry

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I recently synthesised aspirin by refluxing 2-hydroxybenzoic acid with ethanoic anhydride. Then filtering and recrystalizating with HCl I obtained about 1 or 2 grams of the impure aspirin.

Hears my question, when i dried the crystals in the dessicator on filter paper it burnt a hole right through. I know ethanoic acids is a biproduct but surely its not responsible. Anyone know what happened??.

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anyone?

I think one of the acids is responsible for this

Did you use excess acetic anhydride? I can imagine that this esterificates the hydroxyl groups in the paper. It is a really strong acylation agent. This acylation probably causes breakdown of the paper. It is known that acetic anhydride is very corrosive and must be handled with care.

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