On Friday one accident took place in my work due to my stupid mistake. The reaction was about epoxide ring opening by using 3-pentanol as nucleophilic reagent catalyzed by boron trifluoride. When the reaction was completed, I started to quenching the reaction by adding aqueous saturated sodium bicarbonate solution to the reaction RBF. Because the sodium bicarbonate solution was added too fast, lots of foam was generated due to the formation of carbon dioxide from sodium bicarbonate and boron trifluoride. The foam overflowed from the reaction RBF. As a result, I lose some of my product.
What I should learn from this lesson was always slowly quenching one reaction by adding another reagent dropwise.
