Measurement of Density

By Nicholas SchraidtSubmitted—September 24, 2013

Professor KulatillekeChemistry 1000

Wine Distillation LabAbstract

In this experiment the purpose is to distill wine at different temperature ranges and determine the density of the distillate at those different ranges. 18% port wine was heated to the boiling point of alcohol, and the evaporation was collected into two beakers. Beaker A was collected at around 90oC and Beaker B was collected at 90-100oC. The density of the alcohol in beaker A was found to be 0.88 g/ml, and the density of the alcohol in beaker B was found to be 0.95 g/ml. The alcohol in beaker A burned at room temperature, while the alcohol of beaker B and the wine did not burn at room temperature.

Introduction and Experimental Details

Liquid solutions can be separated if the substance is not pure, and made of two or more elements or compounds, the basic elements/compounds can be separated from each other because of their physical makeup. They are separated by their boiling point. The boiling point is the temperature at which a liquid turns into a gas. These different elements/compounds have different boiling points, and so by heating up a liquid solution to the boiling point of one of its constituents, that constituent can evaporate out of the solution while the remaining elements/compounds stay as a liquid. This is what we will do to the wine; alcohol has a boiling point of about 80oC, while water has a boiling point of 100oC. Since wine is made up largely of water and alcohol, heating wine to 80oC will cause the wine to evaporate and leave the solution while the water remains as a liquid. This process will be done in an distillation flask, which allows not all of the evaporation to fall back into the heated wine upon condensing on the flask. The collected evaporation can then be condensed separately from the distillation flask and collected in liquid form. Lastly, we checked to see if the contents of the beakers and the wine burn at room temperature.

Discussion and Limitations on Results

The density of the alcohol in beaker A was measured at 0.88g/ml, which is very close to the literature value of 0.79g/ml. This was due to water that been involved in the distillation process along with the alcohol. That evaporated water was collected along with the evaporated wine. This would cause the density of what was collected to greater than collecting pure alcohol, for water has a greater density than alcohol. This is further represented in beaker B, which has a collection temperature of 90-100oC, and the density of which came out to be .95g/ml. For this temperature, much more water would have evaporated with the wine since this temperature range is much closer to the boiling point of water (100oC). Granted this error can be human, or due to limitations in the equipment. As mentioned in experiment one these are the limitations on results:

50.0 ml Graduated Cylinder +/- .05 mlTriple Beam Balance +/- 0.1 g

Conclusion

The distillation procedure outlined in this experiment has shown one method of separating a mixture into its constituent substances. It is interesting to note that the 90-100oC fraction had a higher density than the 80-90oC fraction; due to the presence of water that had evaporated during the distillation procedure at a higher temperature.