Drying agents, which is more applicable?

[XrLeap]

Hi fellow helpful bees,

SWIX has found out that there are 5 common solid drying agents(not limiting to these 5, there are more):

1) calcium chloride, CaCl2

2) calcium sulfate, CaSO4 (Drierite)

3) magnesium sulfate, MgSO4

4) potassium carbonate, K2CO3

5) sodium sulfate, Na2SO4

There are more, can be found from Aldrich.

SWIX has some questions for drying agent, which would bee used in some dream containing reductive amination. As SWIX has seen a lot of bees mentioned magnesium sulfate, MgSO4 as the drying agent, for getting rid of water in their dreams. Eg 91% IPA to 99.9% IPA, Improved "wet" reductive alkylation by Barium, etc....

SWIX has OTC and cheap source of calcium chloride, CaCl2, can it be used in those dreams? Although SWIX has obtained some Silica gel, CaCL2 price for SWIX is a quater of Silica gel. Can any bee help? Thanks in advance fellow bees:)

[XrLeap]

Can SWIX use the following method to get rid of H2O?

Saturated Aqueous Sodium Chloride
The bulk of the water can often be removed by shaking or "washing" the organic layer with saturated aqueous sodium chloride. The salt water works to pull the water from the organic layer to the water layer. This is because the concentrated salt solution wants to become more dilute and because salts have a stronger attraction to water than to organic solvents.

Note: sometimes a saturated aqueous solution of sodium chloride is called brine.

[Vitus_Verdegast]

UTFSE!

CaCl₂ cannot be used for drying alcohols.

Washing with brine will indeed get rid of most water, but it is on itself not enough to dry an organic solvent.
Most efficiently you should do a brine wash first before adding a drying agent of course.