[industrial_engineer]

Hi - I am reacting CH3CH2-MgBr using water as the solvent (not my choice) and need to figure out what is going on.
 
I have pieced it together so that the CH3CH2 will steal a hydrogen from the H2O to form CH3-CH3 and MgBr2 with an OH^- 

I am just curious if anything else happens between that OH^- and the cyclohexanone, because if not... why is the cyclohexanone their you know?

I.E.

[voidSetup]

I guess the OH^- could attack the carbonyl carbon of the cyclohexanone but using a grignard reagent to form OH- is pointless. You could just dissolve NaOH in water to get OH-. Is the CH3CH2-MgBr bought from a manufacturer?  Because you can not form a grignard reagent in water.

[industrial_engineer]

It is for an assignment in O chem I and the formed gringard is given in ether.  I have a feeling that it may have been a typo where the prof meant to put in H30⁺ instead of the H20

I.E.

[Honclbrif]

Water is kryptonite to grignards. Are you sure you're not supposed to just quench the reaction with H₂O once it is complete?

[industrial_engineer]

I know water kills the reactions... but it says add them at the same time - hey may just be throwing us a curveball to screw with us on the last assignment haha

[voidSetup]

It might be that the cyclohexanone is supposed to also be in ether, which is writted as ET₂O sometimes.  The grignard reagent then should attack the carbonyl carbon of cyclohexanone.  After this is done you do an H3O⁺ workup to isolate the product.  I actually did this same reaction last week to get my Grignard formation skills down better.

[industrial_engineer]

The question states that you don't use any acid workup though haha... That is what I originally thought was going to happen

[voidSetup]

That's weird because you'll just have some precipitate because it forms R-O^- MgBr⁺

[industrial_engineer]

Yah... the whole question seems fishy

[voidSetup]

Maybe he's trying to show you what happens if water gets in?  Do you already know what the desired product is?

[jake.n]

Treating the grignard reagent strictly as a base, you still have an acidic hydrogen on your ketone which would be in equilibrium with -OH in your water phase.