Distillation Of Hexane Essay

First, we have our observation of hexane through its boiling ranges, which we observed to be around 87 to 89 degrees Celsius. It ranged from about 77 degrees in fraction 1 to about 89 degrees in the fraction 10. Next, the toluene stayed relatively the same temperature throughout the first 6 fractions at around 69 degrees and then drastically shot up to 100 degrees by the end of fraction 10. This is due to hexane having a lower boiling point and being able to steadily increase through each fraction evenly as temperature rises while the toluene, because of its higher boiling component, needed the higher temperature in order for higher energy particles to separate and also having room from the lower energy column. A gas chromatography procedure
Doing this will also provide evidence of which component was more volatile. As shown in the graphs and tables, it is observed that hexane is the more volatile compound due to the fact that toluene concentration is more prevalent in the later fractions. This is proven by the fact that there is 0% toluene in fraction 2 and then by fraction 7 it is almost all toluene, meaning that hexane will evaporate first due to its lower boiling point therefore then allowing toluene particles to separate in the later fractions when temperature is over 105 degrees Celsius. Lastly, it is concluded that fractional distillation is a more effective method as opposed to simple distillation because in fraction 7 of the simple, there was only around 36% toluene consumption versus a 96% in the fractional distillation. This is also due to the fact that using a fractionating column makes the samples more pure because it works better at separating the first couple of samples from the