Fractional Distillation
Kaisha Butz
Lab Partner: Jenna Knafo
Instructor: Dr. Beatrix Aukszi
LA: Paige Swalley
09/23/2014
Abstract: The purpose of this experiment was to fractionally distill a hexane/toluene mixture and to analyze the fractions. It is hypothesized that the first fraction will contain only hexane, the second a mixture of both, and the third just toluene. In order to separate the toluene and the hexane a Hickman still set-up was used. Once the mixture was distilled into the three fractions an IR machine analyzed the results. The hypothesis was not supported by the employed methods.
Introduction:
Distillation is the method of boiling a liquid followed by condensing the vapors and collecting the condensation (Mayo,
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According to the spectroscopy for fraction 1 this was true. It was expected that there would only be hexane in fraction 1, but the fraction was collected too late and more than just hexane was therefore found in the fraction. In fact, each fraction 1, 2, and 3 had almost equal amounts of toluene, as can be seen on the spectroscopy graphs. When two substances were mixed together the boiling point was lowered for the substance with the higher initial boiling point, so perhaps this was the reason why toluene evaporated equally in each fraction. The toluene mixed with the hexane very well and created a lower boiling point for itself, thus showing up equally in each fraction. The hexane on the other hand, decreased significantly in amount from fraction 1 to fraction 3 as can be seen on the graphs. Fractions 1 and 2 had similar amounts of hexane, but fraction 1 still had more. Because fraction 1 was collected late, it made sense for fractions 1 and 2 to have had similar hexane amounts because part of fraction 1 was supposed to be part of fraction …show more content…
The first fraction was not completely hexane, the second wasn’t primarily toluene with a touch of hexane, and the third wasn’t completely toluene. The third fraction was pretty close, and supported the hypothesis, but the first two fractions did not support the hypothesis because of fraction 1 being collected too late. Had fraction 1 been collected earlier the results would have been different. Because of experimental errors there was lack of support for the hypothesis, therefore the hypothesis could not be proven true. In order to improve the experiment better care should have been taken in watching the fraction form, and collecting the fraction in a timely