Change in concentration of ethyl acetate for hydrolysis with NaOH. Effects on the rate of reaction and the specific rate constant (PDF)

Internship Report from the year 2016 in the subject Chemistry - Organic Chemistry, grade: A, , course: IB Chem HL, language: English, abstract: During our classes on Organic Chemistry we learnt about hydrolysis of an ester. I wondered if this chemical breakdown of a compound could happen in a reaction with something other than water. After some research, I came to know that this process could occur by reacting an alkali instead of water. I wanted to link this, to the chapter Kinetics that we just finished. For the internal assessment, I thought of checking for the dependency of concentration on such a reaction. So, I decided to find out how fast would the reaction take place if I changed the concentration of ethyl acetate from 0,0025 V/V to 0,005 V/V.

I want to be a scientist who develops performance devices and enhanced models that stimulate and better the chemical reacting system's functional parameters. This concept of reaction rate, as told to me by my father, has paramount importance in the profession I yearn to be in. Although I know that increasing the concentration would increase the rate of reaction but I don't know to what extent or by how much will it increase.

In our classes we were taught about this relation, but I wanted to check for myself if it actually holds true. I thus wished to carry out an experiment to check that what we learnt in our class theoretically, is practically observed too. So the aim of my experiment is to find out to what extent does the rate of reaction change while I change the concentration, at a particular temperature. I was also interested in finding out if there would be any consequent impact on the specific rate constant.