Using a Soxhlet extractor to get out my highly fluorescent product from the tarry reaction mixture. The raw reaction product is placed in the upper part of the extractor in a paper thimble and it is continuously washed with fresh solvent (in this case acetone) till the extracted solution is fluorescent. The solution flows down to the flask at the bottom where it boils and gets back on the paper thimble. The extracted compound is concentrated in the bottom flask and at the end everything what I need from this mixture will be in that flask what already emits a very-very bright blue light under UV(:

Soxhlet extractor is a piece of laboratory apparatus invented in 1879 by Franz von Soxhlet. It was originally designed for the extraction of a lipid from a solid material. Typically, a Soxhlet extraction is used when the desired compound has a limited solubility in a solvent, and the impurity is insoluble in that solvent. It allows for unmonitored and unmanaged operation while efficiently recycling a small amount of solvent to dissolve a larger amount of material.



9:30 pm • 6 October 2015 • 218 notes • View comments