fdnjj6 - 7-8-2020 at 10:31
I'm going to be doing a mononitration of what I think is toluene. I couldn't monitor the temperature of the distillation but there was crap that
boiled over when the oil bath was under 110C and the liquid was boiling at 110-140C. At 140C it was actually bumping though. I assume it was mainly
toluene but since I got my toluene from mixing a bottle of carb cleaner with water, and separating the layers, and distilling, I don't know the
purity.
I'll carry out the nitration anyway since it seems to be mostly toluene. The MSDS only says toluene, acetone, and methanol are in there as well as
CO2. I don't trust it though since I'm pretty sure there was something else in there which was very irritating to my eyes and throat! I'm kinda
pissed. The toluene smells like toluene but since xylene and toluene smell similar and have bascially the same density, I can't figure out if there is
a lot of xylene in there.
I'll carry out the nitration and should be left with a yellow oil and no initial solids. If there are solids, I'll filter them off. Then I have to
chill the yellow oil to -10C - -20C and the para nitrotoluene should crystallize out.
I know the melting points of all of the nitrotoluenes but besides dinitroxylene, I can't find any other metling points of xylene. It seems like xylene
nitration needs a catalyst too. I'm just hoping I get pretty pure para nitrotoluene.
solo - 7-8-2020 at 15:25
trinitro-p-xylene (TPX)m.p. 140.9 °C
....see,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147648/#B8-mol...
fdnjj6 - 7-8-2020 at 18:57
Sorry I should've clarified. I know the melting points of di and tri nitro xylene but I can't find the melting points of mono nitroxylene. The
conditions and temperatures that the mono nitrotoluene will be synthesized at should form mono nitroxylene as well... unless I'm wrong but that's what
the patents I found seem to tell me. They never mention melting points though.
fdnjj6 - 7-8-2020 at 20:13
God damn it I found it. I don't know why but I have this curse that I find answers after I post about them. I literally spent about an hour searching
for data but as soon as I post something, I find it using some other keywords I haven't used before.
macckone - 7-8-2020 at 20:28
fdnjj6,
Can you post the answer it might help in the future for someone else.
solo - 8-8-2020 at 08:39
ortho- nitroxylene MP 7-8˚C
fdnjj6 - 8-8-2020 at 16:36
Thank you!
fdnjj6 - 8-8-2020 at 16:44
There are a lot of isomers but the ortho nitroxylene melting points I found are
3-nitroxylene: 15C
4-nitroxylene 29C
Dinitroxylene is 93C not sure about other isomers of it though.
Since I couldn't use my thermometer to properly determine the temp of the toluene distillation, I'm not 100% certain of what I have. The MSDS says
only acetone, methanol, and toluene but there is definitely some other shit in there that dried out/irritated my throat for 1.5 weeks. Don't use
SuperTech Carb Cleaner!
The oil bath temp was monitored and the temperature of the oil bath was only a bit higher than toluene's bp so it should be toluene. It's impossible
for me to know if I have xylene in there so I'll just carefully nitrate it and go through the whole procedure and test the melting point of my
product. If it melts below 45C, that's bad. Above 55C, that's bad. I'll wash and recrystallize and try again and if it still isn't at 50 ish C, that's
bad. I just wanted some nitroxylene melting points in case it ends up being the wrong mp and then I have some melting points to look at and compare.