Reflux involves heating the chemical reaction for a specific amount of time, while continually cooling the vapour produced back into liquid form, using a condenser the vapours produced above the reaction continually undergo condensation, returning to the flask as a condensate. Reflux reaction. A reflux condenser is an apparatus commonly used in organic chemistry to prevent reactant or solvent loss in a heated chemical reaction for chemical reactions that need to be carried out at elevated temperatures over long periods of time a reflux system can be used to prevent the loss of solvent through evaporation.
reflux reaction
Reflux is the term used to mean ‘letting a solvent boil and collecting its vapour in some kind of condenser to let it drip back into the reaction vessel’ the most common type of condenser i have encountered for refluxing is the dimroth condenser as shown in the image below (taken from wikipedia , where a full list of authors is available). You will need to heat the reaction at the boiling point of your solvent(s) and fit a reflux condenser to the rbf. the condenser has cold water flowing through it; the solvent which has evaporated from the reaction will condense on the surface of the condenser and drip back down into the reaction, thus preventing your reaction from drying out.. Reflux reflux is one of the most common techniques you will encounter in your chemistry laboratory classes. since many reactions between covalent compounds are slow processes rather than instantaneous reactions, prolonged heating forces the equilibrium to give an acceptable amount of product..