Solvent-Free Acylation of Ferrocene: Crowdsourcing Student Data to Evaluate Reaction Conditions

Over two 3 h lab sessions, students carry out a solvent-free acylation of ferrocene yielding a mixture of acetylferrocene and diacetylferrocene along with unreacted ferrocene. Students purify the mixture using column chromatography and confirm the purity of each column fraction using TLC. Students carry out the reaction under a variety of conditions and then compare their results with each other via a Google sheet to determine which condition(s) are best for synthesizing each possible product. This experiment teaches students about the principles of green chemistry and the procedural optimization of organic procedures.