[lukas.stib]

Hello chemists,

I did reflux with 95 g formic acid with 115 g tert-butanol, and an ester tert-butyl formate should be formed. I cooked for less than an hour, and unfortunately no ester can smell it, is smell mixture of formic acid, alcohol and some "weird" smell like gasoline. I have the mixture in the flask and I don't know how to get the ester. Can you help me?

Thank you, Lukáš S.

[AWK]

Completely correct observation. You already know that you cannot obtain esters from tertiary alcohol by this method. It's time to look into the textbook to understand why this happened. You can learn a lot from your mistakes.

[lukas.stib]

OK, thank you very much 

[AWK]

t-butyl esters can be obtained from acids and isobutene under acid catalysis.

[lukas.stib]

I also found a method of acetic anhydride and t-alcohol, but this methods are more difficult for me, so I won't do it. But for me it is important that this esterification reaction is not possible.

Thanks for your answers AWK.