I am trying to separate isobutanol from toulene as it is mixed in at about 10% isobutanol.
The isobutanol is not wanted as it poisons the catalyst, i have tried water washes as it is water soluble.
Does anyone know if this is possible, or should i go hunting for cleaner solvents?
Thank you for reading
You can remove with azeotropic distillation, but you’ll still need a GC to be sure your solvent is good before using in a reaction. Toluene is cheap, just buy better toluene.
Its doable.. but a lot of work. The “quick” version is 10x water washes → dry with h2o desiccant of choice → cacl2, silica gel filtration would also work as final step but lossy.