Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Preparation of Iodobenzene

Knowledge Seeker - 26-12-2020 at 23:40

Hello
I aimed to prepare iodobenzene from the reaction of aniline diazonium salt with KI. I distilled the resulted mixture (I carried out a simple distillation not a steam distillation as described in the procedure) and I ended up getting a dark oily black liquid. I added to it sodium sulphite but I did not obtain a pale yellow liquid but a kind of reddish liquid (picture below). So I'm not sure if this product is iodobenzene or not.

received_813981809457900.jpeg - 33kB

RustyShackleford - 27-12-2020 at 03:12

Looks like some aniline crap to me. Was the distillation performed under acidic conditions to prevent the aniline from coming over easily?

Boffis - 27-12-2020 at 03:43

When I have used aniline derivatives in any reaction I always seem to get a certain quantity of dark coloured impurities. You will need to distil it. Check out Vogel's Textbook of Organic Chemistry for details, I have never made iodobenzene so I can't say whether you need to distil it in a vacuum, with steam or whether you can distil it directly. Your product doesn't look that that bad for this type of reaction!

Knowledge Seeker - 29-12-2020 at 23:22

No, it wasn't. The solution was first turned alkaline according to the procedure before the distillation.
I read Vogel's procedure but I skipped the steam distillation.
Thank you for your replies.