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Transactional Distillation Lab

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surpassed the boiling point of water at 100 degrees celsius, thus vaporizing it and collecting it after it condensed. If all of this occurred, the ethanol concentration by weight should increase from Fraction 3-1 and the density of ethanol should have decreased.

The results of this experiment follow this to an extent as from Fractions 3-1 the distillate collected had a density as followed: .6857, .5719, .5741 respectively. The sources of error that explains why Fraction 2 contained more ethanol concentration as opposed to less is because it is possible that the pocket or valley of the condenser tube next to the clamp as indicated in figure 1 as “A,” is an area where vapor gas particles of ethanol may have been trapped. If these vapor gas particles were able to be released as the distillate for Fraction 2 was collected, Fraction 2 would have then yielded a slightly higher ethanol concentration than Fraction 1, thus density would have decreased instead of increase.

In simple distillation, the distillate collected was not nearly as pure as Fractional distillation because Fractional distillation allows for additional distillation and purification of these liquid components due to the beads that act as theoretical plates. Also, in Simple Distillation, the boiling point of water was reached a littler earlier and this would have begun to …show more content…

Simple distillation distills only once as opposed to Fractional Distillation that iterates multiple simple distillations in one time. This is apparent in the way Fractional Distillation has two main distinct curves showing the vaporization of ethanol in Fraction 1 and the vaporization of water in Fraction 3. I also noticed the sharper shifts in temperature on the Fractional Distillation chart. This sharp shift is the exact moment a molecule of ethanol or water is able to break free from its IFs and escape as a

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