Steam Distillation: the Isolation of Limonene

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Steam Distillation: The isolation of limonene 1. Purpose The purpose of the experiment is to be familiar with the use of steam distillation, to learn how to extract an organic solvent and remove a volatile liquid by a rotary evaporator, and to determine the purity of the limonene. Steam distillation was used because it is a special type of distillation especially for temperature sensitive materials. Dichloromethane was used to extract the aqueous mixture. Magnesium sulfate was used to absorb water and simple filtration was used to remove magnesium sulfate. Rotary evaporator with a steam bath was designed to remove the solvent. Finally gas chromatography was used to identify the purity of the limonene. 2. Mechanism 3. Procedures First I squeeze the orange in order to get its liquid to put into the 250 mL flask. Then I put the thermometer into the thermometer adapter and connect it with Three-way adapter. Then we just make it to be distilled. It takes a long time. After that, we will get the distilled water and filter it. Then we just add magnesium sulfate to absorb water and filter it. What we do next is to put it into the rotary evaporation. Then we just give the sample to TA in order to get the peak. 4. Result and Discussion Steam distillation is a special type of distillation especially for temperature sensitive materials. Many organic compounds, in this case, limonene, tend to decompose at high sustained temperatures. Steam is introduced to the distillation system. Therefore the boiling point of the compound is depressed and allows it to evaporate at lower temperature before the compound becomes inappreciable. The retention got for this lab was 0.216 for the solvent and the limonene is 1.000. To extract the solvent, dichloromethane was added and the aqueous mixture was extracted. Then, magnesium sulfate was added as a drying agent to remove

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