Felagund - 18-6-2024 at 21:30
Hi all,
I have long enjoyed this forum but never posted before. The experiments described here have provided me with hours of reading pleasure, for which I am
very grateful. I have a modest home lab but I have been busy with college classes and unable to do much with it for a long while. Now that I have a
relatively free summer vacation ahead of me, I am hoping to perform some home chemistry again.
I was considering attempting the synthesis of the antibiotic sulfanilamide according to the following procedure.
https://www2.chem.wisc.edu/deptfiles/genchem/Chm346/pdfs/A00...
What do you think? Is this too ambitious? I have experience in organic and physical chemistry labs at college, and I would be confident in my ability
to implement this procedure in a fully equipped lab, but doing it at home presents different challenges. The most difficult reagents to acquire will
probably be chlorosulfonic acid and acetic anhydride. The acetic anhydride could probably be bought, but the chlorosulfonic acid is prohibitively
expensive. Are there any alternatives? Thanks for your replies!
Keras - 18-6-2024 at 22:09
Of course you can try. The various reactions are easy enough to reproduce. The main hurdle will be to get two of the reactants, namely acetic
anhydride and chlorosulphonic acid. The former you can make with a bit of patience, but the second is more difficult, unless you’re prepared to deal
with oleum. Not that it is not impossible, as a recent Nurd Rage video demonstrated, to make oleum from 98% sulphuric acid, which you can then bubble
gaseous HCl in. But you’ll have to distill the chlorosulphonic acid out. Better have good and reliable glassware.
In any case, you’re going to spend a significant amount of time and effort to the preparation of those reactants.
[Edited on 19-6-2024 by Keras]