Chemistry Lab Report

Name: Heather Kate Jaramillo

Date: 07/2/2023

Experiment #: 2

Title: Crystallization- Purification of a sample of impure naphtalene

Purpose: The purpose of this experiment is to practice the steps of crystallization by purifying a
sample of impure naphthalene and to characterize and compare it to the starting material in order
to assess how effective the crystallization procedure is.

Procedure:
1. Ground naphthalene into a powder (destroys crystal structure) and mix in sand and
charcoal dust (insoluble impurities). Add a few drops of Congo red (soluble impurity)
2. Choose a solvent to dissolve solid material- Alcohol methanol
3. Transfer impure crystals into a small Erlenmeyer flask
4. Add a small portion of methanol to the impure crystals and put in a small boiling stick for
even boiling
5. Place the flask on a hot plate
6. Add methanol in little quantities and when necessary. Continue until the compound
dissolves visually.
7. Once the solute has dissolved, temporarily remove flask from heat and add a small
portion of charcoal pellets and put it back on the hot plate.
8. Set up your gravity filtration using a funnel and filter paper.
a. Fold the paper in a specific way- fluting
i. Fold paper in half twice and fold in an accordion style, back and forth
9. Warm up another small flask by adding a bit of the methanol solvent and boiling it on the
hot plate
10. Wet the surface of the filter paper with a bit of warm methanol
11. In small quantities, pour the solution into the filtration
12. Take a pipette and use a small amount of warm methanol solvent to rinse the rest of the
solute into the filter.
13. if needed, take a small amount of warm methanol in the pipette and put some around the
filter bc solute starts to crystallize on the paper
14. once filtration is complete, reduce the volume of methanol in the flask to about 15 mL
(We don't want too much solvent)
a. Evaporate the solvent by adding a boiling stick and turning up the heat
15. To test if the solution is saturated with naphthalene, add a few drops of water and check if
naphthalene turns into a solid (precipitate) instantly.
16. When the drops of water are put in, crystals will start to form as the drop of water
17. The crystals will stay for a moment and then redissolve into the hot methanol solution.
This will check if the solution is saturated with naphthalene and crystallization is ready to
begin
18. Bring the flask back to a boil, then let the solution sit and cool on insulating material so
that it cools slowly to room temperature letting crystallization occur
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19. Place solvent in a mortar and pestle to ground it into uniform particle size. This removes
the different size crystals
20. Push the grounded crystals into a mound in the mortar.
21. Take a melting point capillary and push open end into the sample until the sample is in
the open end
22. Now to isolate the crystals using suction filtration, use a Buchner funnel which is then put
on top of a filtering flask. The filtering flask should be connected to a water aspirator (its
connected to a faucet) with a rubber tube
23. Turn the faucet on. This lets the water passing by the aspiration pull the suction on the
hose which then pulls a suction on top of the filter
24. Place filter paper into funnel, this where the crystals will be collected, then moisten the
paper with a bit of water
25. Stir your crystals to suspend them and dump them into the filter with one quick motion
26. The foam in the flask should be small crystals of naphthalene
27. Do a small wash of solvent so that theres no more mother liquor left and retain any
impurities
28. Take the suction off and use a scoopula to isolate the purified crystals of naphthalene that
were on the filter paper. Now youre able to see the crystal structure and white color of
naphthalene
To check the purity of recrystallized product:
1. Take a small sample of the crystallized product and use a mortar and pestle to grind it
into uniform particle size
2. Once the sample is grounded, pack it into a glass capillary tube for the melting
determination
3. Use a capillary tube (small glass test tube-one open and one closed end) by pushing the
open end of the tube into the material.
4. Drop or wrap the capillary tube against the benchtop to make sure the material is packed
into the closed end
5. Insert the sample into the melting point device (digimelt apparatus).Set a start and end
point (there was a 10 min timer)
6. Heat the sample slowly with a rate of about 0.5 degrees centigrade per minute of increase
7. Look out for 3 points when measuring a melting point: the onset point, meniscus point,
clear point
8. Report the range of melting point temperatures (smaller/narrower the range is=the more
pure the compound is)

Data/Results/Calculations:
Calculating Results:
1. percent recovery
a. % recovery= mass of pure crystals/mass of impure crystals X 100
a. % recovery = 0.89g/2.15g X 100
b. % recovery= 41.4 %
Determine melting point:

Onset point: 80.1℃entigrade

Calculating rage (spread)= 80.7-80.1= 0.6 degree spread

Properties of Naphthalene
chemical formula C10H8

molar mass 128.174 g/mol -1

appearance white solid crystals

odor the strong smell of coal tar

melting point 80.26℃ at 760 mmHg

solubility in water 19 mg/L (10℃)

solubility alcohols, liquid ammonia, carboxylic acids, C6H6, SO2, CCI4, CS2,
toluene, aniline

solubility in alcohol 5 g/100g (0℃)

Conclusions:
The purpose of this experiment was to crystalize a sample of naphthalene and compare the end
material to the starting material of naphthalene. When doing the calculations for percent
recovery, we were able to get 41.4% recovery. This indicates that mass was lost due to the
impurities being removed from the original impure sample. We calculated the range using the
onset point and clear point which resulted in a 0.6-degree spread. Using the data we have and the
melting point of naphthalene, we are able to conclude that the naphthalene is relatively pure.

Notes:
- onset point- temp. of when signs of melting are noticed
- meniscus point- when enough liquid is present and it forms a meniscus (a curve in the
surface of a molecule substance when it touches another material)
- clear point- all solid is melted and theres only liquid
- melting point device- oven-like, letting us control the degree of heating (ie. temperature
increase, rate of temp. increase, and actual temp)
- smaller the crystals=more impurities retained
bûchner funnel- a type of filter with a flat plate and a couple of holes
- melting point capillary- narrow tube with one open and one closed end
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- sand, charcoal and charcoal dust trapped in the filter paper when the solution is being
filtered- making the solution clear and colorless
- localized heating- the sand heats up creating a localized boiling
- warm surfaces prevent solute from crystallizing
- too much solvent in beginning of boiling= harder to crystalize solute at end
- crystallization proceeds from solution that is saturated in solute
- determination of melting point is a way to check purity of recrystallized product
crystallization- purification of solid compounds
- solid products of a chemical reaction require purification
- removes reagents, reaction byproducts, and other insoluble impurities
- imp. for drug molecules, vitamins, foodstuffs
- seven steps of crystallization
1. choose solvent
a. high solubility
b. easily removable
c. non toxic, non flammable, environment friendly
2. dissolve solute
a. minimum amnt to dissolve solute- at or near boiling point
b. unknown solutes- solubility testing
c. grams/100mL= grams/X (mL)
3. decolorize solution
a. color=high molecular weight impurity
i. activated carbon(charcoal) to solution and boiled to absorb colored
impurities (add abt .1% the mass of solute)
4. filter insoluble impurities
a. gravity filtration- short/stemless funnel and fluted filter paper
i. fluting increases surface area=filter efficiently
5. crystallize solute
6. isolate and wash purified crystals
a. vacuum filtration primarily to isolate desired solid
i. büchner funnel and side arm flask
ii. faster than gravity filtration
7. dry and characterize
a. percent recovery equation:
i. 100 X mass of pure crystals/mass of impure crystals
ii. % recovery value is less than 100%
iii. % recovery greater than 100= crystals arent fully dry
- crystallization process
1. impure solute
a. dissolve in hot solvent
2. impure solution
a. decolorize and filter insoluble impurities
3. purified solution (mother liquor)
a. mother liquor cools slowly (room temp) -> crystallization occurs
4. pure solute in impure liquid
a. crystals are collected with suction filtration
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b. washed with pure solved