What could you distinguish octanol from 1-octene by a simple chemical test?

Answer 1

Refer to functional groups. Anything with the suffix -ol will be an alcohol, a OH. Anything ending with the suffix -ene will have an alkene, a C-C double bond. Therefore 1-octanol has an alcohol and 1-octene has a C-C double bond.

Answer 2

A simple test would be to add a small amount of aqueous bromine (Br2) to the two compounds. Alkenes react with Br2 and water to form a halohydrin. Br2 makes the solution brown, but the reaction will consume the Br2 and make the solution colorless.

Answer 3

Try adding bromine. Bromine will add across the double bond of an alkyne, which is visible by noting that the red bromine color disappears upon addition. However, alkanes will not react readily with Br2, so addition of bromine to an alkane will generally have color persistence.

Answer 4

1-Octene can be readily separated from octane by azeotropic distillation. Effective agents are ethyl formate, ethyl acetate and t-amyl methyl ether.

Answer 5

Shake with acidified potassium dichromate - octanol (1-octanol) will react to change the solution colour from orange to green and produce the smell of octanoic acid. 1-octene will not react.