Describe how you could form ethyl ethanoate using only ethanol as the starting material. Include all relevant reagents and conditions.
To perform the esterification, we are going to need to react a carboxylic acid with an alcohol (in this case). We already have the correct alcohol: ethanol. Therefore to get ethanoic acid we must oxidise ethanol using the oxidising agent potassium dichromate (or any other suitable dichromate e.g sodium dichromate) and heat under reflux to ensure complete oxidation. Then we can react the ethanol and ethanoic acid to form the ester. Use sulfuric acid as the appropriate catalyst at room temperature. Only a small yield of ester will be formed due to the reaction being under equilibrium.
CM
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