Chemistry EE Research Help

[bduric]

Hello everyone,

I'm doing my EE in chemistry and my research question is, "to what extent is there a correlation between the acid dissociation constant and the equilibrium constant in an esterification reaction?". I have already executed an experiment in which I determined the equilibrium constant of the five following reactions:

ethanol + methanoic acid

ethanol + ethanoic acid

ethanol + propanoic acid

ethanol + butanoic acid

ethanol + pentanoic acid

 

Now, my issue is that I have only found the literature value for the equilibrium constant for the first two reactions above. No matter how long I search the Internet, I simply cannot find the literature or accepted / expected value for the Kc for ethanol with propanoic, butanoic, and pentanoic acid. If any of you know or could help me find it, I'd really appreciate it. It's crucial that I find the literature values so that I can compare them to my experimental ones.

 

Many thanks.

[kw0573]

Do you know the isothermal equilibrium equation,  ΔG_rxn = - RT ln K_eq? If so, you might only need to find the standard free energy values. For your reactions it should be straightforward because the reactants and products have same coefficients in the reaction equation and you get a dimensionless (or unitless) K without requiring modification (in order to properly use the equation). 

 

[bduric]

That's a really helpful equation, thanks! However, as silly as this sounds, I'm actually struggling with finding the standard free energy values. I'll keep trying, though. 

[kw0573]

Yeah I don't think I should be literally finding your sources. The hard part lies in finding data for the esters. I think you can try pubchem or some other database but they should be well-tabulated.