[dalgur]

Without heating, of course  .
Here's the situation: I have to synthesize anhydrous aluminium chloride from trihydratated aluminium chloride in a solution in which I am using an apolar solvent. The problem is: how to remove it? Aqua ligands, specially with a hygroscopic compound as aluminium chloride, have quite strong interactions with the molecule and I've found no forms of removing them without heating and creating aluminium hydroxide. Also, an important detail to mention is that anhydrous aluminium chloride is specially soluble in this solvent, even more than in the water (~45g/100mL of H2O vs 78g/100mL of the solvent), so, I was wondering if it was not possible to substitute the aquo ligands by the solvent itself as there is little steric hindrance for attacks in a trihydrate (otherwise it would be completely insoluble) and the solvent molecule is small enough to make a reasonable substituition. Maybe adding an acid as sulfuric acid to protonate the water and allow a substitution (or a faster substitution)?  Another possibility could be using an even more hygroscopic compound than aluminium chloride to retain these aquo ligands but no compound came to my mind, would any of this be feasible? If so, examples?

[Hunter2]

Treating with Thionylchloride SOCl₂. Water will be converted to SO₂ and HCl. No water left.

[dalgur]

It worked! Thank you!