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Separation Of Cyclohexane And Toluene

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The distillation that was more efficient at separating the two compounds was the cyclohexane and the p-xylene since the curve of the graph for temperature vs. volume has a slightly better curve (Table 4A). The graph for cyclohexane and toluene was more linear (Table 4B). Furthermore, the mole fraction of cyclohexane and p-xylene was higher than the mole fraction of cyclohexane and toluene. For instance, the mole fraction of cyclohexane and p-xylene (when adding the mole fraction of the first ml and the last couple of drops) was 0.6604 while the mole fraction for cyclohexane and toluene was 0.13396. A higher mole fraction means that the compounds were purer which means that they separated better—since increasing the mole fraction increases the vapor pressure. Therefore, my hypothesis was supported. …show more content…

Whereas for simple distillation, the compounds need to be around 80C apart in order for proper separation to occur. Thus, cyclohexane and toluene were not able to be properly separated since the boiling point for cyclohexane was 80.74C while the boiling point of toluene was 110.6C—there two boiling points are fairly close to one another. Thus, the mole fraction for cyclohexane and toluene were fairly low when compared to cyclohexane and

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