IntroductionThis experiment was done to isolate an organic substance, eugenol present in clove oil, which is immiscible with water through a new technique called steam distillation. Using the high vapor pressure and low boiling point of water in steam distillation, eugenol with its low vapor pressure and high boiling point is extracted from the cloves and checked for its content of purity. Theory Distillation is the separation of two substances based on differences in boiling points, as when the vapor pressure of a certain substance (hereafter abbreviated simply VP) reaches and equals the applied pressure (here the applied pressure is the atmospheric pressure). Steam distillation, however, specifically requires two immiscible liquids, one is water and the other is an organic substance, eugenol in this experiment. In steam distillation, Dalton's law of partial pressures is applied. It is stated that P_Totale=P_A^°+P_B^°, or in this case P_(Totale VP)=P_water^°+P_eugenol^°. Here, since eugenol is an oil and cannot mix with water, both are two independent systems. This equation states that with the combined VPs of water and eugenol you will get a certain total VP for the system; and once this total VP equals atmospheric pressure, the eugenol-water mixture will begin to boil. When considering the relative contributions to total VP from water and eugenol, know that as the temperature of the system increases the VP of water increases as does that of eugenol. But, because more water is present, the VP of water increases faster and accumulates more than the VP of eugenol. In other words, the rate at which the VPs of water increase will be faster than the rate at which the VPs of eugenol increase, thus contributing more to the total system VP... middle of paper... in eugenol extraction from cloves. Although this technique was effective in extracting pure eugenol, seen through the purity analysis performed above and the fact that eugenol would decompose if boiled on its own rather than through steam distillation, it was however not efficient. The efficiency was lacking when considering how much time was spent to simply perform the extraction and only recover 8.607% of the theoretical mass of eugenol and how much money/supplies were used in the extraction to obtain just that amount of eugenol. An alternative to solve this efficiency problem could be to crush/grind the eugenol before steam distilling it in order to give greater surface area to the quantity present, thus decreasing supply costs and increasing the quantity of final product; or you can explore a completely new technique, such as extracting clove oil through solid-liquid extraction.