first reaction

I ran my first reaction of my sabbatical today.  2 and a half hours of set-up, 2 and a half hours to add the reagent with a syringe pump (while I went to lunch), and an hour and a half of work-up and clean-up.  I did NOT use the expensive reagent that makes the reaction enantioselective (the whole point of the research) and I'm glad, because there is a steep learning curve working in a new lab.  I'm just happy that it looks like I made the correct product!

For those of you playing the home game, I butylated benzaldehyde with a titanium reagent, but none of the chiral ligand:

(Sorry for those of you not accustomed to finding chemical structures in blogs).

Tomorrow (maybe) I will run a column and inject it on the HPLC to confirm that is racemic.

I promise to NOT blog every reaction I run in Kyoto...