The urea adducts of certain esters containing twenty carbons

Urea has the interesting and unexpected property of forming solid complexes with many straight-chained organic compounds. So selective is the formation of these complexes with linear aliphatic compounds that it provides a means of separation form the analogous branched and cyclic compounds. Linear esters derived from normal saturated and unsaturated esters give adducts also but not to the same extent. Although many linear aliphatic compounds form adducts, the compounds so formed have varying degrees of stability depending on molecular weight, saturation and the shape of the molecule. The purpose of this investigation is to determine the effect of the position in the molecule of the carbonyl group in the formation of urea adducts with a series of twenty carbon esters