Department of Chemistry, MES college of Arts, Commerce and Science, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Preparation of meta-dinitrobenzene from Nitrobenzene is an elementary synthesis carried out in any organic preparation experiments in laboratories. The substrate nitrobenzene is a pale yellow coloured liquid with a characteristic almond like odour. Upon continuous vigorous agitation with nitration mixture at cooler temperatures, nitrobenzene solidifies as a yellow coloured solid called meta-dinitrobenzene that gets precipitated when added with a suitable quantity of ice cold water. As a result, a lot of filtrate gets accumulated during the separation of pure product hence obtained. It is observed that large quantities of filtrate containing harmful organic residual effluents are discarded directly into the drains. This makes the treatment of waste water extremely dangerous. If left untreated it can prove to be deleterious to all the aquatic living forms, when it enters the water bodies. The objective of this study is to use the filtrate and recover as many organic compounds as possible before draining it out as waste. The recovered compounds can be reused within the laboratories or supplied as raw materials to other small scale manufacturers.