How to make aspirin at home.

Making aspirin is very easy and you can actually do it at home but its usability will depend on your accuracy, dosage and level of contamination. You can as well just do it for fun, to sharpen your science skills, to boast to your friends or just to be on the know side.

Procedure

• Weigh 2g of salicylic acid and record the mass.
• Add 5ml of liquid acetic anhydride.

• Add 5 drops of concentrated sulphuric (vi) acid to create an acidic environment and to increase reaction rate.

• Shake and heat in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
• After 10 minutes, the color will change to yellow brown.
• Add 10ml of cold water and shake.
• Put in cold water bath for 10 minutes to allow aspirin crystals to form.

• Filter aspirin from the solution by using a buchner funnel and an aspirator.
•  Sunction from the aspirator creayes partial vacuum that helps to pull water from the funnel.

• Put filter paper on top of the funnel and sprinkle  very little water on top so that the paper sticks on the funnel.
• Pour the solution on the funnel and turn the tap water to increase filtration rate.
• Scrap aspirin from the funnel into a 100ml beaker.

• To ensure you get all aspirin, rinse the filter paper with alcohol.
• Dissolve aspirin in water and recrystallize by placing the beaker in 60ml ice water and remove after 10 mins.
• Weigh a filter paper. 
• Put it in a buchner funnel and pour the aspirin+alcohol solution into the funnel and filter.
• Take out the filter paper with aspirin on it and put on a watch glass to air dry.
• Weigh the filter paper with aspirin.

Sample results.
✔️Mass of salicylic acid=2.0g
✔️Mass of filter paper=0.354g
✔️Mass of filter paper plus aspirin=2.712g
✔️Mass of aspirin=2.712g- 0.354g=2.358g

➡️Mass of aspirin must be greater than mass of salicylic acid otherwise you might not have reacted well and the reaction will not be technically and economically feasible.

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