Simple Distillation Lab Report Discussion

Distillation is a process that separates two substances based on their boiling points. When the substances are heated in a flask, the substance with the lower boiling point will vaporize first, and therefore condense and turn into liquid first when cooled. The vapors of the substance travel through the 3 way adaptor and condense when they come into contact with the glass of the cool jack condenser, turning into a liquid and sliding down into the collection flask. The condenser is filled continuously with running water. This is used to cool down the vapors so the vapors will turn into liquid.

The two main ways to distill a substance from another is through either a simple distillation or fractional distillation. A simple distillation is used

The simple distillation trend was also more linear, with a constant large increase in temperatures compared to the fractional. The fractional on the other hand had temperatures that increased, though they were by a couple degrees for most of the experiment at the end had a large increase in temperatures. This suggests that discrepancy in temperature jumps between the simple and fractional is due to the wool within the fractional column, where the substances in the fractional condense, re-evaporate, causing smaller jumps in temperature as the process takes longer. The observed boiling points of methanol from the simple and fractional distillation respectively were 67.0° C and 65.4 °C. The accepted boiling point of methanol as stated in the literature is 64.7°C (O’Neil et al, 2006). Compared to the accepted value, the observed boiling point for methanol was much higher for the simple distillation, while the fractional distillation had a similar observed boiling point. There was also a discrepancy between the observed boiling points of the simple and fractional distillation, with the simple having a larger observed boiling point for methanol. This suggests that the fractional distillation does yield a more pure, accurate distillate because the observed boiling point is similar to the accepted literature