GrayGhost-
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seperation ketones
Hi, I have a question, if with simple distillation I can seperate acetone of butanone 40/60 %? Boiling points are 58 and 80 celsius respectively.
thanks.
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oberkarteufel
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I'd say that the minimal difference of boiling points for simple distillation is 50 degrees.
For 20-something (similar to ethanol-water) I'd use reflux packed column, or at least add Vigreux column to the simple distillation setup and prepare
for a couple of repetitions.
Here, on the other hand, you have some calculations supporting the statement that a 100 degree difference of boiling points is necessary for a simple
distillation
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Organic_Chemistry/Organic_Chemistry_Lab_Techniques_(Nichols)/05%3A_Distillation/5.02%3A_Simple_Distillation/5.
2B%3A_Separation_Theory
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macckone
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Butanone hydrazone is insoluble in water while acetone hydrazone is.
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Dr.Bob
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With a good column, you should be able to separate them to some degree, but it might take a few runs to get either one pure. That is just about the
difference that could be done mostly in one run, but reality is often that it is harder to do than theory says, so maybe you can get mostly pure
matieral in 2 runs with a 12-18" vigreux distillation. I have done similar things before with decent results, but never as good as I thought
possible.
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Mateo_swe
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Maybe you could look into separating compounds using a column chromatography.
There are easier variants as Flash chromatography or DCVC and those can separate bigger amounts of material.
Or look into if you can exploit some different properties of the materials you want to separate as freezing points, solubility etc.
[Edited on 2025-11-21 by Mateo_swe]
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Radiums Lab
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As the people above mentioned, fractional distillation and chromatography are the best methods here.
Water is dangerous if you don't know how to handle it, elemental fluorine (F₂) on the other hand is pretty tame if you know what you are doing.
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Dr.Bob
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Chromatography will be hard to scale, and quite expensive. Commercial operations use distillation as it is cheap, easy to scale, and with the right
equipment, will give good results. You can't separate two ketones that are volatile by chrom, as there is no way to evaporate them from the solvent
without losing them. Trust me, I have tried to isolate volatile compounds before, you can't do it if you need to rotovap them.
A fractional distillation can do this, but will require the right design.
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