Question

In my distillation experiment for organic chemistry lab, they had us find the average drop size (mL/drop) by taking our total volume collected and diving it by how many drops we observed. Now, in my lab report, I have to explain my data for this and its significance. I got 0.019 mL/drop for simple distillation and 0.01 mL/drop for fractional. What is the significance of this data?

Answer 1

First of all, note that the drop size in fractional distillation (0.01 mL/drop) is less than that in simple distillation (0.019 mL/drop).

The above observation indicates that the rate of distillation is slower in fractional distillation that in simple distillation.

Slower the distillation rate, more pure is the distillate (in the case of fractional distillation), hence it can be used as such for the next step without any further purification.

Whereas faster the distillation rate, less pure is the distillate (in the case of simple distillation), hence it has to be further purified before proceeding to the next step.