Organic Chemistry Laboratory CH 200L (2012 2013) 2F-MT Group 4 Experiment 1

Simple and Fractional Distillation

Dan Neil Fabian*, Jomarie Galao, Harold Go, Christine Ho, Patricia Guadines Department of Medical Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy University of Santo Tomas, Espana Street, Manila 1008
Date Submitted: July 16, 2012 Abstract Distillation is a process wherein a liquid is purified and concentrated by means of separation of its components through heating to its point of vaporization and collection of the condensate in another container. In this experiment, fractional distillation was used to separate the components of vodka, which are ethanol and water, and determine the amount of ethanol present in said sample. About 30mL of vodka was used for the distillation proper and was constantly heated until about 20 small-sized test tubes each contained a small amount of the distillate and until the temperature reached 100 degrees Celsius.

Introduction Distillation is a process that separates a substance or a mixture of substances from a solution through vaporization. Types of distillation include simple, fractional, vacuum, or steam distillation. Many industrial processes depend on distillation, such as production of gasoline, distilled water, xylene, alcohol, paraffin, kerosene, and many other liquids. Fractional distillation can be used to separate a mixture, in this case vodka, into its component Methodology In this experiment, the group carefully assembled the fractional distillation set-up. After finishing the setup, the pear-shaped distilling flask containing a 30mL vodka with a number of pieces of boiling stones were constantly heated in a rotating manner with the use of an alcohol lamp. In each test tube, a small amount of distillate was being gathered while its temperature was also recorded until it was almost 100 degrees Celsius. The

parts, or fractions, such as in separating chemical compounds by their boiling point by heating them to a temperature at which several fractions of the compound will vaporize[1]. The objective of this experiment is to (a) separate the components of vodka by using fractional distillation, (b) compute for the percentage ethanol and percentage loss of vodka and (c) make a distinction between simple and fractional distillation process.

set-up was allowed to cool and the volume of the residue was also taken note of. The first and the last distillate were evaluated by use of the flammability test and the temperature versus the volume of the distillate collected were plotted on a table provided. The percentage of ethanol and percentage loss was also calculated.

Results and Discussion The following table shows the result of the experiment using distillation technique: the fractional

constant as represented by some of the straight lines in the chart.

TEST VOLUME(ml) TEMPERATURE (C) 0.50 ml 1.00 ml 1.50 ml 2.00 ml 2.50 ml 3.00 ml 3.50 ml 4.00 ml 4.50 ml 5.00 ml 5.50 ml 6.00 ml 6.50 ml 7.00 ml 7.50 ml 8.00 ml 8.50 ml 9.00 ml 9.50 ml 68 72 74 76 78 78 79 80 81 82 84 86 89 91 93 94 94 96 96

Figure 1 shows the direct relationship among the volume of distillate and temperature until it comes to a point when the temperature is near 100 degrees Celsius. While the distillation goes on, the mixture will gradually reduce the more volatile component. As this process happens, the boiling point will rise, and the distillate, will contain a continually decreasing portion of the more volatile component. In the

TUBE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

flammability test, the first test tube produced a flame which means that ethanol is present in the first distillate, while in the 19th test tube, the flame was extinguished because the distillate is free of ethanol which also removed its flammability. It proves that as distillation continues, the amount of alcohol

gathered in the test tubes is gradually decreasing. Figure 2 shows that as the volume of the the When collected distillate also

increases, increases.

temperature the

temperature

Figure 1. Volume and Temperature of the Distillate

reached approximately 100 degrees Celsius, the temperature remained

120 TEMPERATURE (oC) 100 80 60 40 20 0 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 VOLUME (mL) 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5

Figure 2. Temperature vs. Volume

Here are the equations used in the experiment:

References
[1] en.wikipedia.org/Fractional_Distillation