Distillation: Separation of Alcohol and Water

Distillation: Separation of Alcohol and Water

Abstract

In this experiment, we separate 15 mL of a 20% ethanol-water solution by using the method of simple distillation and fractional distillation.

Introduction
The most common method for separating and purifying volatile liquids is distillation, which makes use of the specific boiling points of the liquid components in the mixture. It involves heating a substance to vapor and cool it down again. There are two methods of distillation¡Xsimple distillation and fractional distillation. When the minor component is nonvolatile, or when one of the liquids has a boiling point well below the others, that is, the components differ greater than 30-40 C, a simple distillation is used. However, if there are two or more liquid components, which have boiling points near each other which means the components differ by less than 30-40C, a fractional distillation must be used.
Azeotrope is a mixture of liquids that distill at a constant temp...