Lab 5 Conclusion

In conclusion to the distillation lab, I think our data shows that our experiment went well. Our graph resembles the graph in the lab handout (graphs attached to lab notebook sheets). The fractional distillation shows the sharp slope between when the cyclohexane burns off and mostly only toluene remains. The microscale graph seems to be accurate because it shows the large jump where the cyclohexane is burned off. To view the apparatuses used in the experiment look at the attached pictures. To compare the simple and fractional distillation, our GC analysis shows the samples we submitted. The first samples of our simple distillation showed that 76.21 percent of the mixture was composed of cyclohexane and 23.36 percent was toluene. The first few drops of our fractional distillation had cyclohexane composing 70.56 percent of the mixture leaving 29.27 percent for toluene. The other set of data is for the last drops obtained. The simple distillation final drops analysis showed 12.11 percent of cyclohexane and 87.78 percent of toluene in the mixture. These numbers compare to the final drops of the fractional distillation which showed 19.48 percent cyclohexane to 80.38 percent toluene. The fractionating column is used to increase the efficiency of the distillation process which is supposed to give a nearly pure final product. The reason our data might now show this is because the final drops of the fractional distillation weren’t collected before taking it off the heat. This could have allowed some of the cyclohexane to condense and when the drops were finally obtained, some cyclohexane could have gotten in the