daragh8008
Hazard to Self
Posts: 61
Registered: 15-10-2008
Location: Eire
Member Is Offline
Mood: Happy
|
|
Fun with acetyl acetonate
Hi all,
So I have been playing with my new bottle of acetyl acetonate in my on going efforts to produce a spinable Al sol. I was wondering if it would be
possible to chelate Al directly from a salt. On this occasion I was using Aluminium nitrate. A heaped spatula full of aluminium nitrate was placed in
a beaker (approx1.5g) and covered with acetyl acetonate(approx 15ml) The nitrate did not seem to dissolve very well. In the past I found the sometimes
you can get molten nitrate to mix, so I heated the mixture so as to melt the nitrate. At moderate heating the nitrate melted but distracted by a call
the heating was continued without mixing. As expected the nitrate started to decompose and White crud started to appear on the bottom of the beaker.
No surprise there. I'm assuming it is Al(OH)3, AlOOH or Al2O3 or a mix there of. Interestingly no brown gasses were observed coming from the mixture.
Instead the acetyl acetonate turned deep red/ brown. Think blood colour. So I was wondering what was happening. I would guess on of three things
occured,
1) the acetyl acetonate was nitrated from the decomposition of the aluminium nitrate to form.......? Any suggestions!
2) some of the Al was Chelated and given the absence of alcohol diluent instead of a pale yellow the chelate was dark red?
3) nitric acid was formed via the combination with the water of crystallisation of the aluminium nitrate and the NO2
Any suggestions what may be going on.
|
|
|
Adas
National Hazard
Posts: 711
Registered: 21-9-2011
Location: Slovakia
Member Is Offline
Mood: Sensitive to shock and friction
|
|
Aluminium nitrate may act as a Lewis acid, and may have caused aldol condensation (like in the case of acetone - you get a red-black polymerized oil).
Rest In Pieces!
|
|
|
daragh8008
Hazard to Self
Posts: 61
Registered: 15-10-2008
Location: Eire
Member Is Offline
Mood: Happy
|
|
Interesting, any way to test for this. Don't have a distillation rig so I wouldn't be able to remove the excesss acetyl acetonate. Perhaps
liquid-liquid extraction could separate out the oil? I think I'll have read up on this aldol rxn to get some ideas as to what the product is.
|
|
|
![[*]](images/xpblue/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
