Isopentyl Acetate Synthesis

Isopentyl acetate was prepared by fluxing it with alcohol with also some mixture of acetic acid and hydrochloric acid. The acetate was obtained by distillation method with 0.41g and a percent yield of 20%. The mass obtained in this experiment was approximately two times lower compare to the mass in the lab manual book. This might occur during the extraction of the aqueous solution in each step of the experiment. Due to the low of the mass of isopentyl acetate, the percentage yield (20%) was like three or 4 times lower than the normal percent yield of the product. Even though we had a strong smell of banana, but there was the presence smell of some other compounds as the NMR spectrum shows (see attach sheet). This showed that the product obtained was not completely pure due to the extraction or distillation process, but not to forget that it can also be due to the unclean of materials. The NMR data was consistent with the one expected for the product, where the CH bond was deshield, and the CO bond the shield, but not the least shield (see attach sheet).
Conclusion

In this experiment, (mass of isopentyl acetate) was formed directly by esterification of acetate acid with isopentyl alcohol. Sulfuric acid was used as a catalyst. The percentage yield of isopentyl acetate was approximately 20% with a theoretical of 2.082g. This might due to the reason that I lost some of my product in the distillation process. It also might be the fact that my TF told me to add a little drop of sodium chloride in the solution because it was cloudy right after I added 5ml of water. Another error might include using unclean glassware. This experiment was partially success since the reaction produced a banana smell despite the low percent yield