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Distillation Lab Report

Good Essays

Patrick LePochat (U93484271)
Lab Partners: Jonathan Gomogda, Thomas Cella
Fractional Distillation Credit to: Group 11
TA: Matt Knestrick
Simple and Fractional Distillation of a Binary Mixture

Introduction Distillation is the process by which a solution containing two or more compounds with varying volatility are heated until the lowest of the compounds boiling points occurs, vaporizing it into the distillation head (containing a thermometer) followed by condensing it (with running water through a tube from bottom to top) until it becomes a liquid where it can again be captured in a receiving flask.1 This process works best and gives purest results when one of the compounds is volatile (easily vaporized) and the other is either non-volatile or volatile with a different boiling point.1 The means with which this process works is by giving sufficient energy to the compound, which in this case is the lighter compound, with the lowest boiling point such that it will vaporize while the (heavier) compound with the higher boiling point remains in the solution with insufficient vaporization energy. Boiling point of a liquid can be impacted in many cases by intermolecular forces such as hydrogen bonding or dipole-dipole interactions, but in this instance cyclohexane (bp: 81°C) and toluene (bp: 111°C) only experience dispersion forces with no distinct differences other than their molecular weights.2 The boiling point is signified by the vapor pressure equaling the

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