It reacts with alkali hydroxides yielding dichlorocarbene, a highly reactive compound. Dichlorocarbene reacts with amines yielding isocyanides via the carbylamine reaction. Chloroform is mainly used as a nonpolar solvent in the lab.
The easiest route to chloroform is the haloform reaction. I tried this out.
To a 1000ml conical flask I added 500ml of 5% sodium hypochlorite bleach. I placed the flask in an ice bath and slowly added 10ml of acetone (other ketones work as well). The mixture turned cloudy and the temperature rose to 40 C (acetone addition is very exothermic). I left the mixture to stand for 1 hour. By this time the cloudiness had gone and a small amount of immiscible chloroform had formed at the bottom of the flask. Using a syringe, I collected the chloroform which was quite dirty.
I carried out 3 more runs and received more dirty chloroform. To clean my chloroform up, I distilled it over anhydrous calcium chloride, collecting the fraction boiling at 60-63 C. This yielded 9ml of very clean pure chloroform.
It is advisable to add 1% ethanol to the chloroform to stabilize it. The ethanol stabilizer is very important as it neutralizes any phosgene (very toxic, sometimes deadly) formed by the chloroform. I did not do this because I don't plan on storing the chloroform for long.
This was my product:
3 NaOCl + (CH3)2CO + H2O ==> CHCl3 + CH3COOH + 3 NaOH
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