Question

I am going to perform a simple distillation for organic chemistry and I need to anser these questions beforehand:

a. Why should you disregard the first few drops of material collected?

b. Why should the "water" hose be at the bottom of the condenser, rather than the top?

c. Why is insulating the stillhead important?

d. Explain why you must clamp the flask, not the distillation head.

Answer 1

For simple distillation

a. the first few drops are discarded as the liquid collected did not equilibriate the temperature level till this time.

b. Water entered through the bottom fills the codenser fully before making an exit to the drain pipe. If water hose is connected other way round, the condenser would not be full at any given time.

c. Insulating helps keep the temperature constant all along the fractionating column during distillation and distillation head must the same temperature and constant at which the liquid is distilled.

d. Clamping the flask ensures no accident happens during the distillation If the flask be loose. On the other hand distillation head clamping only would not keep the flask and setup in proper position, instead flask is loosely held and might fall off anytime.