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Procedure: The Isolation of Trimyristin from Nutmeg

Submitted by crmckenzie on Tue, 04/03/2018 - 14:57

Nutmeg (1.029 g) tert-butyl methyl ether (3 mL, 25.18 mmol) and was added in a 10 mL round bottomed flask and boiled for 10 minutes. The mixture was cooled for 3 minutes and filtered in a micro-scale filtration system pipet-ful at a time. After this was completed, tert-butyl methyl ether (2 mL, 16.79 mmol) was added to the same round bottomed flask and it was then warmed, left to settle, and filtered. The filtered solution was then dried to yield the crude product (0.109 g, 10.9%). Acetone (10 mL, 0.136 mmol) was added to the flask and the solution was recrystallized. The solution was then collected via suction filtration to yield the trimyristin of the first recrystallization (0.092 g, 8.94%). A second recrystallization was performed on the trimyristin (0.010 g, 0.972%).

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