1. Erik Napoles, Ruiwen Lin, TaeEun Kim
Department of Chemical Engineering, California State University Long Beach
1250 Bellflower Boulevard Long Beach, California 90840
Introduction:
An azeotrope is a mixture of two or more liquids where one constituent cannot be removed
completely by simple distillation.
Batch distillation refers to the use of distillation in batches. Batch distillation is a common
chemical unit operation widely used in pharmaceutical, biochemical, food, and specialty
chemical industry. The advantages of this process include small scale production for
laboratory work, low-cost equipment, and that it can separate a wide variety of different
mixtures.
The most common example of azeotropic distillation is in the separation of ethanol from
ethanol-water mixtures in the production of alcoholic beverages.
Conclusions:
•The ideal distillation for red and white wine closely matched our experimental values.
•Red wine seems to be easier to distill ethanol from in comparison to white wine,
although the difference might be due to experimental errors.
•Sources of error include:
Human error in reading the refractometer
Interpolation method might not be completely accurate
Wine is not a perfect ethanol-water mixture; other components might have
affected the results
Pressure in the lab could have differed between distillation
•Future experiments could include a second distillation of the distillate for better
separation, comparing wines to other kinds of alcohol, and changing the pressure in
the batch vessel.
Results:
Procedure:
1. Fill the flask with 50 mL of ethanol-water mixture (wine).
2. Run cold water through the condenser and start heating up the mixture.
3. When the first drop of distilled ethanol is ready, transfer the drop and measure the
ethanol weight percent (%) with a refractometer.
4. Calculate the ethanol weight percentage using the concentration vs. refractive index
table.
5. Measure the ethanol weight percent at a 0.2 g interval.
6. Stop distilling when the ethanol weight percent starts to drop quickly.
7. Repeat the same procedure with a different type of alcohol.
Equations:
(Rayleigh Equation)
Lo = Original liquid mass in still
L = Total liquid mass after a given time
xo = Initial liquid mass fraction of ethanol
x1 = Liquid mass fraction of ethanol after a given time
y = Vapor mass fraction of Ethanol
Acknowledgements:
Mettler-Toledo
(http://us.mt.com/us/en/home/supportive_content/application_editorials/Ethanol_re_e.h
tml)
McCabe, Smith, Harriott, Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering
Objective:
• Determine the concentration of distilled ethanol from red and white wine.
• Use the Rayleigh model to generate the plot of distillate composition y, versus fraction of
liquid distilled for both experimentally and theoretically.
• Compare the experimental curves with theoretical curves.
• Compare the experimental curves of red and white wine, and determine the effect of the
categories of wine on distillation.
Batch Azeotropic Distillation:
Ethanol-Water Mixture
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25
Vapor
Weight
Fraction
Liquid Mass fraction
Red vs White Wine Distillation
Ideal White Wine
Ideal Red Wine
Exp Red Wine
Exp White Wine
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0 1 2 3 4 5
Vapor
Weight
Fraction
Mass of Distillate
Red vs White Wine
White Wine
Red Wine
Red Wine White Wine
Ideal Mass out (g) 10.61 9.11
Exp Mass out (g) 10.29 8.91
Table 1: Distillate ethanol mass comparison