Practical: Fermentation of Glucose

Practical: Fermentation of Glucose

Aim:
To perform an experiment to investigate the mass changes during the fermentation of glucose.

Hypothesis:
The mass lost during the fermentation reaction should be about 8.8g when 18g of glucose is added to 1g of yeast in water.

Equipment:
Flask Fractionating Column Pipes Rubber Stopper Bunsen burner Beaker Test tube Thermometer 2 Boss Heads 2 Clamps Condenser 2 Retort stands Boiling chips Adaptor Sticky tape Round bottom flask Volumetric flask Chemical Balance

Diagram:

Practical: Fermentation of Glucose

Method:
1. Add 1g of yeast, warm water and 18g of glucose to a volumetric flask. Wedge a rubber stopper in the top of the flask and fix a pipe onto the neck. 2. Record the total weight of the volumetric flask, pipe, stopper and the contents inside it. 3. Fill another flask with lime water and record this total weight also. 4. Place the end of the pipe in this flask making sure that it is submerged in the lime water. 5. Measure the weight of these two flasks at regular intervals until the weight of both of the flasks no longer changes. 6. Record the total change in weight of both of these flasks. 7. Pour the once yeast, glucose and water mixture (which is now water and Ethanol) into a round bottom flask and set up the fractional distillation assembly as shown above. 8. Heat the solution until the thermometer reads just over 78oC and keep it around this temperature (this is the boiling point of ethanol and will allow the solution received in the receiving test tube to be primarily Ethanol). 9. Test the concentration of ethanol in your final solution by taste or by burning it.

Results:
Calculations/ Equations

Practical: Fermentation of Glucose

Observations: When the Carbon Dioxide was released from the reaction the lime water turned milky. Nearly each of the days that we measured the volumetric flask, the weight of the solution had decreased. The weight of the flask with lime water also decreased each day. When we burnt our distilled ethanol it burnt fairly rapidly, meaning that the solution consisted mainly of ethanol and not much water.

Tabled Results: Day of Test 1 2 6 7 Total Change in Weight Weight of flask with yeast, glucose and water (grams) 344 343.4 337 337.19 6.81 Weight of Flask with Lime Water (grams) 472 471.5 471 470.7 1.3

Discussion:
On the whole our experiment was fairly accurate and effective in showing the production of alcohol from the fermentation of yeast; however our experiment did suffer a few inaccuracies. It would be expected that the flask with lime water in it would gain weight due to the reaction with the carbon dioxide to form calcium carbonate; however other variables must have changed this overall result. This could include evaporation of the lime water combined with the possibility of some of the carbon dioxide escaping from the flask without being combined with the lime water. On the 3rd day that we measured the weight of the Volumetric flask it weight was heavier than the weight that we recorded for the final day. However because this is only a difference, we can conclude that this inaccuracy was probably due to human error in the measuring on one of these days. Due to facility and equipment limitations of the class room we were unable to test this experiment as accurately as we would have liked. Testing the concentration of ethanol by tasting or burning it, is not a very accurate way to measure its concentration. In the industry this experiment would have been undertaken at a much more constant temperature and repeated many times to ensure that the ethanol was as pure as possible. A longer fractionating column would also have been used. To give a proper reading for the concentration of Ethanol in the industry this sample would be tested for its optical density.

Conclusion:

Practical: Fermentation of Glucose

All and all for a class experiment our results were fairly accurate and we successfully gained insight into the process of producing ethanol through the fermentation of glucose and the mass changes that occur during this reaction.

Thomas Game