Question

In producing a certain drug, one synthetic route involves three steps with percentage yields of 87.2%, 91.1%, and 86.3%. An alternate synthesis uses two steps with percentage yields of 85.5% and 84.3%. What is the three step synthesis overall yield? What is the two step synthesis overall yield?

Answer 1

Answer:

68.6 %; 72.1 %  

Explanation:

The overall percentage yield for a multi-step synthesis is the product of the percentage yields for each individual step.

For the three-step synthesis

Overall yield = 0.872 × 0.911 × 0.863 = 0.686 =68.6 %

For the two-step synthesis,

Overall yield = 0.855 × 0.843 = 0.720 = 72.1 %