Analysis Of Acetone And Butanone

The separation of mixtures to obtain pure products is done through a technique called distillation. This lab looks at two different distillation techniques, simple and fractional. Acetone and butanone were mixed together and then put through the distillation process in order to obtain each as a pure substance. These substances were boiled into vials that gave us fractions #1-4. Fraction #1 was obtained through simple distillation and fractions #2-4 were obtained through fractional distillation. The fractions were then ran through a gas chromatography machine to test how pure the product really was. The experiment proved that fractional distillation was much more effective than simple distillation, due to our product of fractional distillation …show more content…
The flask was assembled in with accordance with Figure 3.The thermometer was positioned with bulb just below the bottom of the condenser arm for accurate temperature readings. A wide mouthed vial labeled Fraction #1 was used to collect distillate. The sand bath was heated by setting the Variac at 90 until the solution began boiling, then lowered to 70 to prevent the solution from boiling too quickly. Temperature was recorded for each drop that fell into the receiving vial. After the first 10 drops were collected, the vial was capped, sealed with Parafilm, and placed in ice. The vial was replaced with a small beaker to collect the rest of the distillate. Fraction #1 was analyzed using gas chromatography in a nonpolar column and a polar column, both heated to …show more content…
This process failed because of error in the experiment. When hooking everything together the vial in which the product was dripping into, was too close to the tube. Causing the liquid to flow down the side of the vial not allowing drops to be seen. This was a problem because then much more than the 10 drops that were supposed to be collected, were collected. Meaning that we got more than the purest substance into the vial. Fractional Distillation, the distillation process that produced fractions #2-4 was more effective at separating out acetone from the mixture. This can be derived from the fact that fraction #1 did not peak as well as fraction #2. The peaks were very different in fraction #2. The gas chromatography showed a 88.2% and 11.8% area at 80℃ Nonpolar. Meaning that the substance worked better with the 80℃ vs the 100℃. All of the substances seemed to work better with the Nonpolar