Combustity Of Alcohol And The Enthalpy Of Combustion Of Alcohol

The data collected through the experiment and the graph indicate that there is a positive relationship between the number of carbons in a carbon chain of an alcohol and the enthalpy of combustion of the alcohol. Meaning as the number of carbon atoms in an alcohol chain increases, its enthalpy change of combustion also increases.

The average enthalpy of combustion of all alcohol in Table 3 supports the conclusion. From the table, one can notice that Ethanol’s enthalpy of combustion is 319 higher/lower (need to show the calculation?) than methanol, and ethanol has one more carbon than methanol. This correlation can also be supported by the graph. The upward trend in the bar graph shows the relationship between the two variables. The increase in enthalpy from methanol to

Same as the factor above, this leads to an inaccurate measurement of the amount of enthalpy of combustion for the alcohol. This error is hard to eliminate, as we cannot accurately measure how much energy is taken away from the surroundings and how much of heat energy was actually absorbed by water.

Thirdly, during the experiment, a yellow flame was obtained. This indicates that there is incomplete combustion of the alcohols. Instead of producing carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide is formed. Therefore, this incomplete combustion results in low standard enthalpy of combustion values as the reaction was not complete.

Lastly, during the experiment, tap water was used to measure the change in temperature. However, tap water contains several unknown ions and minerals and every time when the conical flask was refilled with water, the concentration of those ions and minerals may vary. Furthermore, when calculating the heat energy, we used the specific heat capacity used of the water; however, the unknown minerals may affect the specific heat capacity of the