Removal of paraffins by urea

Urea forms addition compounds with (unbranched) paraffins in which the urea molecules are arranged spirally. Paraffin chains are held in the hollow spaces. In this way, short-chain, unbranched alkanes can be removed from fractions obtained by vacuum distillation or branched alkanes be separated from unbranched ones.

lt is recommended that this experiment is carried out together with the previous one (P7171400) in group work-sharing. The experiment can be prepared by one group and be evaluated in the next lesson by all the groups.

Learning objectives

• Unpurified lubricating oil contains long-chain paraffins which greatly reduce the lubricating effect in the cold.
• These paraffins can be removed by solid extraction.

Benefits

• Easy teaching and efficient learning by using interactive experimentation PHYWE-Software
• Experiment is part of a complete solution set with experiments for the topic Organic Chemistry matched with international curriculum: all topics are covered