[Ugo51]

Hi everyone,
I'm preparing some water-saturated butanol for my SDS-PAGE and i was wandering how butanol gets water saturated...
i mean, does the water form proper bonds with butanol? is it a stable compound?

would be possible to get some explanatory formula so that i can visualize it?

thanks!
Ugo

[Honclbrif]

There's no covalent bonding, n-Butanol is just able to dissolve a small amount of water.

When I make gels I use 70% EtOH to level the top. If you're careful it works just as well, and smells a hell of a lot better.

[Ugo51]

eh eh, i like your method to decide between Butanol and Etanol 

anyway...ok,no covalent bonds. fair enough.
but then, why when i mix equal volumes of n-Butanol and H2O i get a biphasic system?
what's in the bottom phase?

i was told it's n-Butanol-saturated water...how this is different from water-saturated butanol?
it's just a matter of % composition in H2O and butanol respectively?

[discodermolide]

eh eh, i like your method to decide between Butanol and Etanol 

anyway...ok,no covalent bonds. fair enough.
but then, why when i mix equal volumes of n-Butanol and H2O i get a biphasic system?
what's in the bottom phase?

i was told it's n-Butanol-saturated water...how this is different from water-saturated butanol?
it's just a matter of % composition in H2O and butanol respectively?

You have both. The lower phase is butanol saturated with water, the upper phase is water saturated with butanol.
By the way, butanol/water forms a nice azeotrope and is great for removing water from a system, perhaps even better than toluene/water.

[Ugo51]

...isn't the butanol saturated with water the upper phase?

so ... can i get the proportion of butanol and water in the upper and bottom phase from the P-xy graph?

thanks!

[discodermolide]

...isn't the butanol saturated with water the upper phase?

so ... can i get the proportion of butanol and water in the upper and bottom phase from the P-xy graph?

thanks!

Sorry my fault I got it the wrong way round:((