Question

Why is it useful to calculate a % recovery for recrystallization even though the number doesn’t tell you if purification was accomplished?  How might % recovery tell you if something went wrong during recrystallization?

Answer 1

part a

Percentage recovery is important tool to calculate how much of a reactant has been sucessfully converted to product in a chemical reaction.

In many reactions , by products are formed with the desired product and in many cases not all the reactants actually react.

So, after the reaction by products, unreacted reactants are also present .

part b

Percent recovery of more than 80% is good, less than 40% is poor and more than 100% indicates that the products are impure as the measured weight of the product will include the impurities.