Engineering Projects/Perfume/Howard Community College/Fall 2011/501 Distillation

Distillation apparatus

Perfume Problem Statement

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how to get all different alcohol from a wine from a chemical method called "distillation" and mainly to get the scent of each alcohol possible...

Team Members

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Summary

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In week 0 of this project was spent individually, but we completed the same experiment. The experiment was to set up the apparatus, and prepare for actually distilling the alcohol. Week one of this project was spent almost together and we all put the chemical instruments together and learned the names of new tools that we have used in this experiment to get some scent or some distilled liquid. Then each team member completed different tasks as I was working on set up. Zach tried his hand at creating a perfume by adding essential oils to alcohol. In week 2 and 3 we were working together to come up with a better apparatus set up, and completed the project with both unknown leftover distilled alcohol from last year's class, and using wine. During week 4 we got the apparatus set up correctly and distilled our sweetest smelling perfume yet.

Story

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We were introduced to the equipment on the day that teams were assigned. The goal is to recreate the figure to the right and begin distilling scents to create a perfume by heating up the wine, spirit or any other alcohol. In order to distill your own alcohol, first, you must have a product that already contains alcohol. Distillation, as discussed earlier, does not actually make anything. It is simply a form of purification, allowing you to separate the alcohol from all other components in the given liquid. There are generally two types of alcohol containing products that you will distill- those intended for neutral spirits and/or for the addition of essence, and those intended to retain a varying degree of character from the base liquid.

We had some problems at first with the set up, but by doing some research we reduced our problems a little bit. However the whole set up and was not as complete as it needed to be, there was a problem documented in the pictures, we had the set-up explained the first week, but then we went and tried our hand at the set up only to revert back to the originally explained to us set up at the very end. For the second week we realized that we needed to be watching the temperature in the tube where the vapor was rising. As soon as we had some constant temperature, we realized that there was a gas coming out from the tubes and we could see the condensation of the pure alcohol traveling through the tubes into a graduated cylinder. Using the rising temperatures, and their plateaus, we were able to separate one alcohol from the others. We refined the experiment and replaced our leaky tube with the vertical cooling tube with marbles, which did result in the sweetest smelling perfume we had gotten to that point.

As a result, this project was very interesting and very fascinated to all of us in the team, we have had some experiments how to get some scent from any kind of alcohol, but while we had the concepts of perfume distillation down pretty well, due to the lack of chemical instruments, we were not able to get better result in terms of measuring the mass and density and boiling points of the alcohols in the final product.

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*videos from web

fractional distillation video
documentary of our scents video

*websites

Introduction to perfume
the procedure of distillation
perfume history

*photos

 
complete distillation set up
 
Pure alcohol in the graduated cylinder
 
condensation inside the tubes going up
 
set up of distillation
 
Second picture of set up
 
Third picture of set up
 
Liquid that will be used for the distillation experiment
 
The marbles prevented a leak in our system
 
Last distillation picture, with marbles in the vertical cooling flask

*personal videos

Video of my incomplete set up
video 1
video 2
video 3

Decision List

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Here is a list of the formal decisions we decided upon as a team:

1. Collect some information about pefume
2. to determine how distillation works
3. Develop how to connect the tubes
4. Prepare some alcohol
5. use white wine
6. Record results of experiment.
7. Develop accuracy and sensitivity with chemical instruments
8. find out the properties of different alcohol
9. Record results of experiment.
10. calculate the density
11. Measure the alcohol before, during and after
12. Record results of experiment, and interpret data for complete analysis of alchol
13. usage of any other liquid to perform different scent
14. being very mindful with temperature reading

Material List

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1. Florance flask
2. Volumetric flask
3. Erlenmeyer flask
4. Graduated cylindar
5. Beaker
6. Utility clamp
7. Filter funnel
8. Electrical heater
9. tubes
10. thermometer
11. wine
12. unknown alcohols
13. stands
14. balance
15. water, foil

Software List

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In this project there are no software that we can use, it is not required...

Time

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Each member of team has spend 4 hours per one hour class outside of class minimum..because we did not have chemical instrument/equipment at home, we had to use what we have in ENES lab.

Tutorials

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There aren't any tutorials in this project but we have listed the procedure to set up the distillation for incoming fellow students to push the project forward in the future.. we also have the material's name that has been used in these experiments, it would help them to save time..

Next Steps

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Next steps would be to use more precise measuring equipment to correctly identify the alcohols that get distilled.oil refinery one of ways to separate different oils, who ever interested in these kind of engineering, they can work on a bigger project by using our little steps we have taken in our project. We have the basic information for next student to push the project forward in the future.