Question

Give reason for the following:

A mixture of alcohol and water can be separated by fractional distillation.

Answer 1

• Distillation- It is a combined process of boiling liquid to get into a gaseous state and condensing it to get the pure liquid back.
• Fractional distillation- Fractional distillation is a type of distillation that involves the separation of miscible liquids.
• It works on the principle that liquids mixed have differences in their boiling points.
• The boiling point is the temperature at which a liquid turns into its gaseous state.
• When the temperature goes up a fraction of liquid vaporizes i.e., turns into the gaseous state.
• That gas is collected and condensed to get it into the liquid state.
• The boiling point of water is 100 °C.
• The boiling point of alcohol is 78.37 °C.
• When the mixture of both alcohol and water is heated, first the alcohol turns into vapor.
• The gaseous alcohol is condensed and cooled to get alcohol in the liquid state.
• Hence, we can separate alcohol and water by fractional distillation as they have differences in their boiling points.