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 PropanolAimIn this experiment I volition investigate to see which alcohol releasesthe most energy during combustion Methanol, Ethanol, Propanol,Butanol or Pentanol.HypothesisI think that the alcohols with the longest carbon chains forget releasethe most energy. This is because when a bond is broken energy isreleased. This means that the alcohols with longer chains andthusly to a greater extent bonds bequeath release more energy. This will mean theywill heat the water quickest. This should mean that Pentanol will heatthe water by the largest mount in 5 minutes. However, because of thelonger hydrocarbon chains and therefore more bonds, Pentanol will alsobe the hardest to ignite, least volatile and least viscous.Despite the larger requirement for input of energy, the amount createdby the breaking of bonds should annex by more which will mean thatPentanol will still release mor e energy than Methanol, Ethanol,Propanol and Butanol. To test this I have performed severalcalculations. By using figures for the amount of KJ/mol that thebreaking of various bonds (O-O, C-H, O-H, C-C, C-O) release I havecalculated the amount of energy that is needed to combust each of thealcohols. graphThe calculations that I have performed have proved my theory to becorrect. Pentanol is quite clearly the alcohol that should releasemore energy, more than five times as a good deal as Methanol, scarce myexperiment 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. Eventhough the combustion product... ...could have effected the amount of alcohol that was getting to the trail of the wick to be switch offt. Also, the wicks were made of manydifferent materials. Although the wick itself does not burn thedifferent materials may have soa ked up more of the alcohols allowingthem to burn easier.However, I do think that the method that we developed was the best waythat we could have done the experiment. The overall method was verysuccessful and allowed us to get laid the experiment efficiently.However, I would quite like to repeat the experiment. I woulddefinitely try to change the method so that the experiment is in amore controlled environment. This would prevent several factors, suchas the wind, from effecting or results as they did in this experiment.Overall the experiment was relatively successful and provided us witha fairly useless, but interesting, set of results.