Separation of Urea and Formic acid

[adianadiadi]

Any idea of separating Urea from Formic acid from their mixture?

Both are water soluble.

[Horza2002]

Do you want to keep both components? And I am also assuming you mean urea as in (NH₂)₂CO and not a generic urea compound.

 

If you have a mixture of them in water, then you could add saturated sodium carbonate to your mixture. This would deprotonate the formic acid to give the sodium salt. You could then extract the moxture with an organic solvent say ethyl acetate or dichloromethan. You might have to do this a fair few times to get off the urea out but it should be possible....the formic acid salt will not dissolve in the organic layer at all so you will have seperated them.

 

If you then wanted the formic acid as well, you would then simply need to acidify the aqueous washes to get it back as a solution in water.

Edited March 6, 2011 by Horza2002

[John Cuthber]

I'd have to check but I think that toluene dissolves formic acid, but not urea.

However urea might dissolve in a mixture of toluene and the acid.

 

Why do you want to know? It seems an odd pair of compounds.