Investigation to Find the Relative Energy Release of Five Alcohols: Eth

Investigation to Find the Relative Energy Release of Five Alcohols: Ethanol, Methanol, Propanol, Butanol and Propanol Aim: In this experiment I will investigate to see which alcohol releases the most energy during combustion; Methanol, Ethanol, Propanol, Butanol or Pentanol. Hypothesis: I think that the alcohols with the longest carbon chains will release the most energy. This is because when a bond is broken energy is released. This means that the alcohols with longer chains and therefore more bonds will release more energy. This will mean they will heat the water quickest. This should mean that Pentanol will heat the water by the largest mount in 5 minutes. However, because of the longer hydrocarbon chains and therefore more bonds, Pentanol will also be the hardest to ignite, least volatile and least viscous. Despite the larger requirement for input of energy, the amount created by the breaking of bonds should increase by more which will mean that Pentanol will still release more energy than Methanol, Ethanol, Propanol and Butanol. To test this I have performed several calculations. By using figures for the amount of KJ/mol that the breaking of various bonds (O-O, C-H, O-H, C-C, C-O) release I have calculated the amount of energy that is needed to combust each of the alcohols. GRAPH The calculations that I have performed have proved my theory to be correct. Pentanol is quite clearly the alcohol that should release more energy, more than five times as much as Methanol, but my experiment will show whether this extra energy can be put to good use, or if too much is wasted for it to be useful. The calculations show that Pentanol will release more energy. Even though the combustion product... ...could have effected the amount of alcohol that was getting to the tip of the wick to be burnt. Also, the wicks were made of many different materials. Although the wick itself does not burn the different materials may have soaked up more of the alcohols allowing them to burn easier. However, I do think that the method that we developed was the best way that we could have done the experiment. The overall method was very successful and allowed us to complete the experiment efficiently. However, I would quite like to repeat the experiment. I would definitely try to change the method so that the experiment is in a more controlled environment. This would prevent several factors, such as the wind, from effecting or results as they did in this experiment. Overall the experiment was relatively successful and provided us with a fairly useless, but interesting, set of results.