First, thanks for your information, WizardX, most informative!
Too bad, obviously the condensation happening between aldehydes and ethyl formate results in an unwanted side product. And after I told him SWIM is almost sure his bad yield was a result of acetal byproduct formation, too. Do you know which properties benzoic aldehyde acetal has, especially solubility/suitable solvents, boiling point? And what does it smell like? Almonds I guess?
(That would explain the smell after SWIM washed his post rxn mixture, if the acetal is water soluble this would bee a simple explanation)
The reason why I asked about ethyl formate was because SWIM wants to purify his nitroethane by removal of the ethyl formate with which it is "contaminated". Although the orgsyn procedure for purification of ethyl formate could bee very useful in case SWIM would need his large amount of ethyl formate for some wierd synth (this will happen for sure sooner or later, any suggestions for its use?), SWIM just wants to clean the formate out of his precious NE without fract. distillation because his vigreux column broke a while ago...
and he is planning on condensing NE with BA, not BA with formate..
Any suggestions are welcome!
Oh, I forgot: does anyone know if ethyl formate will form an azeotrope with nitroethane when distilling? (if this was NOT the case, a careful simple distillation would do the trick, SWIM would love to hear that!)