Organic synthesis
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I would like to know why phosphoric acid was used in the synthesis of aspirin and how I would be able to obtain soluble aspirin.
Ulex says
Phosphoric acid is chosen as a catalyst, following industrial practice, because of its relatively harmless nature compared with other possible acids and because it is cheap and produces few side-reactions.
Soluble aspirin is the calcium salt so you would have to neutralise aspirin with, for example, calcium hydroxide or carbonate. I suspect this would be trickier to do than this suggests, because the calcium salt of aspirin, though more soluble than aspirin itself, does not appear to be freely soluble in water.
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updated: 21 March 2005
