The purpose of this experiment is to conduct four different elimination reaction under an acidic and basic environment. The gas chromatography is use to explain the distribution of the product composition for each reaction. Under the acidic condition, the reagents used were sulfuric acid, 2-butanol, and 1-butanol. Meanwhile, under the basic condition, the reagents used were potassium t-butoxide, t-butanol, 1-bromobutane and 2-bromobutane. The peaks were easily matched with their corresponding products because the gas chromatography distributed the peaks in an order were 1-butene, trans-2-butene, and cis-2-butene follow a first to last order. The gas chromatography gave the percent composition for each product so no calculations were needed to find it.
Theory Behind this experiment, elimination was the principal mechanism. In an elimination reaction, two sigma bonds are broken and two substituents are lost (a…show more content… When heat is applied the elimination reaction is favored, and the trans structure is more stable therefore it is the reason there's a larger percentage of it. The distribution for 2-bromobutane was 47.5% for trans-2-butene, 34.0% for 1-butene and 18.5.% for cis-2-butene. The 2-bromobutane undergoes a E2, thus it exhibits a second-order kinetics, which is the fastest way to attain the stabilized the products. The distribution for 1-bromobutane was 100% for 1-butene. The reason why there was 100% is because no hydrogen shift occurred making it impossible to get the trans and cis products because the carboncation need to move from the terminal position to an internal position. Meanwhile, the distribution for 1-butanol was 46.2% for trans-2-butene, 29.2% for cis-2-butene and 24.6% for 1-butene. In this reaction, a hydrogen shift occurred to make trans the most produced