Overview
Experiment Overview: In this experiment, we will obtain enantiomerically enriched (S)-(–)-alpha-methylbenzylamine using chiral resolution technique. Racemic alpha-methylbenzylamine will be reacted with enantiomerically pure (2R,3R)-(+)-tartaric acid to form diastereoisomeric salts which can be separated by selective crystallization from methanol. The isolated ammonium tartrate salt will be converted to the optically active free amine by acid-base extraction with sodium hydroxide. We will skip the additional purification by vacuum distillation as shown in Part 3 (please ignore this part in the video). Our last goal for this lab will be to use the polarimeter in order to obtain the optical rotation of the product, from which we will determine enantiomeric excess and evaluate the efficiency of our resolution.