Organic Chemistry Tech 704

5. Provide a conclusion statement that addresses the following:

a) What conclusions can you draw regarding the relative efficiencies of the two separation techniques based upon the answer to #2.

Based on our data and data example in Figure 6, our data curves for simple and fractional distillation are fairly consistent with the given example. Our temperature values seem to be very low compared to the values in Figure 6. This could be due to a thermometer error. Our simple distillation temperature started at around 76 °C, whereas in Figure 6 started around 82°C. Our fractional distillation started at 69°C instead of the expected 80°C. Our simple distillation reflects a gradual increase in temperature which seems to be indicating inefficient compound separation, slightly more than what was shown on page 46 of our text. Our values for simple distillation started at 76°C and ended at around 96°C. For fractional distillation our values started at 68°C and then there was a sharp increase to 83°C and end at around 93°C. From our experiment

b) What conclusions can you draw regarding the relative efficiencies of the two separation techniques based upon the answer to #3.

Due to both of our trials, fractional distillation at 68°C and simple distillation at 76°C, temperatures seem to be below the given boiling point of 82°C shown in Figure 1 on page 43. Our guess as to why there seems to be a significant difference in the values is that there was a problem with the calibration of the thermometer or that the tip of the thermometer was not far enough down the distillating head to have given accurate readings of the temperatures. Some of our data, for temperature, was far off from the expected values due to thermometer problems, that being said it is not certain that our data is actually useable.

c) What conclusions can you draw regarding the relative efficiencies of the two separation techniques based upon the answer to #4.

Our corrected RI values are very close to...