Abstract The synthesis of ethyl acetoacetate in textbook is to use ethyl acetate and sodium via Claisen reaction. There are some disadvantages of this method including difficult operation, safety issue, long reaction time, low quality of the product and low yield. Based on the same experimental purpose, principle and content, we proposed some new operations as following to improve the experimental results:using sodium and ethyl acetate (0.52 in mol ratio) under reflux condition, adding sand and stirring to create sodium beads, adding cyclohexane into system and fractionating to purify the product. Improved experiment is safe to operate. The products have higher purity and higher yield (over 70%).
