NaOH + Drying agent as an alternative to using a strong base?
Removing water with drying agents to push equilibrium further to the right is a tried and true synthetic technique but I wasn't able to find any cases
of it being applied to pushing the equilibrium forward for the enolates of compounds that would usually require "strong bases" to fully deprotonate. A
lot of compounds can't be deprotonated by NaOH because of equilibria with water, but what if that water is removed?
Would these compounds be able to be isolated, or would they be unstable in the presence of air/moisture and be forced to be kept in an organic
solvent?
For instance, the compound Pinacolone requires a strong base (Butoxide or Na/K metal) and only very slightly deprotonates with NaOH with much of the
equilibrium lying to the side of the water. Could the Sodium Enolate of Pinacolone be isolated, and if the water was removed as it is formed?
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