Now I'm wrestling with a particular Claisen condensation.
I did it so far about 5 times the wrong way.
Next time I'd like to get some product at last!
My question is: why does this reaction require sodium-alkoxyde be mixed (suspended?) in ether when in the condensation step alcohol would be produced
from the alkoxyde?
I tried a shortcut (to save precious ether) and used absolute alcohol instead of the ether, but the condensation did not worked.
I'm also wondering about another shortcut: what if I used dried kerosene (or pet. ether, or something like that) which is much cheaper than ether?
Does ether actually dissolve the dry alkoxyde powder or just forms a suspension with it? Or does it something special to the alkoxyde in these
reactions (as e.g. complexing with Mg in Grignards)?
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