Distillation Of Cyclohexane And Toluene Lab Report

Title: Distillation of Cyclohexane and Toluene

Introduction: The experiment was conducted to show which type of distillation is the most accurate in separating the two liquids. Simple distillation results were compared to the different techniques of fractional distillation in order to show which was the most accurate in separating the liquids.

Procedure: This experiment followed the directions present in the manual for the simple distillation method. 15 mL of the Cyclohexane and Toluene solution was used in the distillation flask and the heating mantle was initially set at 25V. Eventually, our TA suggested to turn up the heating mantle to 50V because the liquid was not boiling after 20 minutes of heat. After the forerun was disposed,

For the first fraction, it was collected at temperatures between 79oC and 95oC. Based on the boiling point of Cyclohexane being 80.7oC and the boiling point of Toluene being 111oC, the first fraction should have been almost completely composed of Cyclohexane. The second fraction was collected at temperatures between 95oC and 100oC and should have been mostly composed of Toluene because the majority of the Cyclohexane should have been in the first fraction. Since the residual liquid was the liquid that had not boiled at a temperature of 100oC, then almost all of that remaining liquid should have been

The average mole fraction for the different types of fractional distillation with packing is less than 0.15; the fractional distillation packed with steel wool had the lowest mole fraction at 0.1386139 and the simple distillation set up had the highest mole fraction at 0.336633663. In the second fraction the mole fractions varied significantly between the different setups. The fractional distillation with steel wool had the lowest average at 0.5293501, while the fractional distillation with the empty column had the highest average at 0.821075. The fractional distillation with beads (mole fraction of 0.7008487) and rings (mole fraction of 0.7095746) had very similar average results, while the simple distillation had a mole fraction of 0.557708628. In the residual fraction, which was supposed to be almost pure Toluene, all of the distillation setups had mole fractions of Toluene above 0.94. The fractional distillation with the empty column had the highest average mole fraction with 0.97843 and the fractional distillation with the steel wool had the lowest average mole fraction with 0.9466054. While the fractional distillation with the empty column had the purest residual liquid remaining, the individual data points for all the