Hi guys, how are you? The other day we synthesized ortho and para nitrophenol in the lab. The distillation went wrong somehow and we ended up having a mixture of a black, orange, yellow solid. We don't know how to isolate the 2-nitrophenol. If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them. Thanks! Bye!

Question

festinger · Answer

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-steam-distillation-able-to-separate-out-4-nitrophenol-from-2-nitrophenol

tatianagomezb · Answer

Hey. That's what we did. But some of the liquid inside the beaker projected towards the distillate which is why we need a second purification step to get rid of the black tar like solid. Thanks for your time

festinger · Answer

Any guess what the black tar is?