Synthesis of new compounds serves important practical purposes. The pharmaceutical industry continuously seeks and develops new compounds as potential drugs for treating disease. The agricultural industry also relies on synthesis to produce new organic chemicals for weed, pest, and fungi control. Alkyl halides are especially useful starting materials in the synthesis of new substances. They can be prepared from alcohols by reaction with hydrogen halides. Such a reaction is called a substitution, where a halogen replaces a hydroxyl group as a carbon substituent
[...] The E1 elimination mechanism competes with SN1 at higher temperatures because it is more favored by entropy since substitution of a chloride ion for a hydroxyl group creates order and is less thermodynamically favorable. The elimination product, 2-methyl butene, would have wasted starting materials. The highest product yield was achieved under the third set of experimental conditions. This yield is significantly higher than 19% of the first reaction which had only 1.0 equivalent of HCl, but only slightly higher than 41% of the second reaction, which used 3.0 equivalents of HCl. [...]
[...] The percent yield of 1 was 48%. Finally, the fourth set of conditions also used 3.0 equivalents of HCl and in addition, the reaction was refluxed for 10 minutes. The resulting percent yield decreased to but was still significantly higher than the product yield from the first set of conditions due to the increase in number of equivalents of HCl. However, the percent yield of 37% from refluxing the reaction is lower than that from the second set of conditions, which had the same experimental conditions but no refluxing. [...]
[...] With a 1:1 ratio of reactants in the first set of conditions, the reaction did not reach equilibrium. Since 2 is the limiting reagent, HCl must be in excess. Because it was not, some of the 2 went unreacted in solution and was discarded during the extraction. In the second reaction, the increase in the number of equivalents of HCl effectively increased product yield. In the SN1 mechanism, after the hydroxyl leaving group has departed, the resulting tertiary carbocation is susceptible to attack by the chloride anion. [...]
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