which alcohol and carboxylic acid would produce isoamyl propanoate by Fischer esterification
I'm not an organic chemist so I must figure these things out as I go. It is done this way. Think about how one makes ethyl acetate.
acetic acid + ethyl alcohol = ester.
CH3COOH + C2H5OH => CH3COOC2H5 so the ethyl of ethyl acetate comes from the alcohol and the acetate part of ethyl acetate comes form the acid.
To make isoamyl propanoate, you want propanoic acid and isoamyl alcohol.
To identify the alcohol and carboxylic acid that would produce isoamyl propanoate through Fischer esterification, we need to understand the chemical structure of isoamyl propanoate and how esters are formed using this reaction.
Isoamyl propanoate has the following structure:
CH3CH2C(O)OCH2CH(CH3)2
In Fischer esterification, an ester is formed by the reaction between an alcohol and a carboxylic acid in the presence of an acid catalyst. The general reaction can be represented as follows:
R-OH + R'-COOH ⇌ R'-COO-R + H2O
Where R represents the alkyl group of the alcohol and R' represents the alkyl group of the carboxylic acid.
To produce isoamyl propanoate, we need an alcohol with the isoamyl group [(CH3)2CHCH2CH2-] and a carboxylic acid with the propanoate group [-2CH3].
Therefore, the alcohol needed is isoamyl alcohol [(CH3)2CHCH2CH2OH], and the carboxylic acid needed is propanoic acid [CH3CH2COOH].
By reacting isoamyl alcohol with propanoic acid in the presence of an acid catalyst (such as sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid), isoamyl propanoate can be obtained through Fischer esterification.