Chemistry nightmare!!!!!!!!!

Question

there were two questions bothering me...

1. how can you separate ethyl alcohol from whiskey, using laboratory apparatus and explain.

2. how are you going to separate the caffeine from soft drinks using laboratory apparatus and explain.

need it within fifteen minutes..

Answer 1

Whiskey is a mixture of mainly ethyl alcohol and water.  In order to separate them you need a substance, like Calcium Chloride, which absorbs water, to extract the water, leaving the alcohol.

You cannot boil the alcohol or water off as when you do the distillate is a mixture of both chemicals.  It is called an azeotropic mixture.  See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotrope

There are several methods of extracting caffeine.  One uses a toxic chemical, methylene chlorids, and is no longer used.  You could boil off all the liquids, but that would leave the sugars and caffeine.  The sugars can be removed by charring them leaving the caffeine and carbon.  The caffeine could then be extracted with an acid solution of water.

The industrial method would be to use CO2 as a super-critical fluid, which caffeine dissolves in.  Of course it also would evaporate the entire soft drink so that method is probably not practical.

Answer 2

1. Distillation.  Ethyl alcohol boils at 79C.  Water boils at 100C.

2.  Extract the soft drink with methylene chloride.  Caffeine is more soluble in methylene chloride than water.  Evaporate the methylene chloride to get the solid caffeine.

Answer 3

Distillation is the process of separating a mixture of liquids with different boiling points. In this case, we're trying to separate ethanol (alcohol) from water. Pure ethanol boils at 78.4oC, and pure water boils at 100oC, so heating the wash will make the ethanol boil off first.

Can't help you with the last one...sorry