<span>Saturated sodium chloride
is used to transfer the product rather than water since it is not polar and
rinsing the product with water would revert any 4-methylcyclohexene back to
4-methylcyclohexanol in the Hickman Head and thus lowering the percent yield;
using water would shift the equilibrium towards the reactants. Also
sodium chloride removes the small amount of phosphoric acid and also a small
amount of water. If one were to add water, both 4-methylcyclohexene and
phosphoric acid are partially soluble making difficult to remove the water
later; sodium chloride makes the water less reactive so easier to remove by
making the aqueous later more polar.</span>
The saturated sodium chloride solution has a strong affinity for water molecules and there is the possibility of changing the saturated solution to a dilute solution in the presence of pure water. Because of these reasons, the saturated sodium chloride solution removes water molecules from the system to become a diluted solution. That is the reason why the saturated solution was used instead of pure water.
