Chemical Properties
Clear colourless liquid
Physical properties
Clear, oily, flammable liquid with a faint odor resembling cyclohexane, cyclooctane, or gasoline.
Uses
Cycloheptane is used as a nonpolar solvent for the chemical industry and as an intermediate in the manufacture of chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs. It can be used to get fluorocycloheptane.
General Description
A colorless oily liquid. Insoluble in water and less dense than water. Flash point 60°F. Vapors heavier than air. Inhalation of high concentrations may have a narcotic effect. Used to make other chemicals.
Air & Water Reactions
Highly flammable. Insoluble in water.
Reactivity Profile
Saturated aliphatic hydrocarbons, such as CYCLOHEPTANE, may be incompatible with strong oxidizing agents like nitric acid. Charring of the hydrocarbon may occur followed by ignition of unreacted hydrocarbon and other nearby combustibles. In other settings, aliphatic saturated hydrocarbons are mostly unreactive. They are not affected by aqueous solutions of acids, alkalis, most oxidizing agents, and most reducing agents.
Health Hazard
May be harmful by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. May cause eye and skin irritation.
Fire Hazard
Special Hazards of Combustion Products: Vapor may travel considerable distance to a source of ignition and flash back. Container explosion may occur under fire conditions. Forms explosive mixures in air.
Environmental Fate
Biological. Cycloheptane may be oxidized by microbes to cycloheptanol, which may oxidize to
give cycloheptanone (Dugan, 1972).
Photolytic. The following rate constants were reported for the reaction of cycloheptane and OH
radicals in the atmosphere: 1.31 x 10
-12 cm
3/molecule?sec at 298 K (Atkinson, 1985) and 1.25 x
10
-11 cm
3/molecule?sec (Atkinson, 1990).
Chemical/Physical. Cycloheptane will not hydrolyze because it has no hydrolyzable functional
group.
Purification Methods
Distil it from sodium using a Vigreux column (p 11), under nitrogen. It is highly flammable. [Bocian & Strauss J Am Chem Soc 99 2866 1977, Ruzicka et al. Helv Chim Acta 28 395 1945, Beilstein 5 H 92, 5 IV 92.]
