Extraction of Spinach Lab

854 Words4 Pages
Extraction of Spinach Lab Ruben Villalobos TA: Luis Oquendo Date work performed: February 6, 2013 Date work submitted: February 13, 2013 Abstract: The results found where only two of the components found in spinach were separated, they were chlorophyll and carotene. They were separated using a column filled with alumina this allows the separation of the different components of the spinach by polarity. Therefore the chlorophyll was more polar than the carotene. Chlorophyll’s Rf value was 0.32 and the carotene’s was 0.96. This was confirmed by the lab manual in page 30 which contains the list of the different Rf values by decreasing value. Introduction: Chemist use many ways of separating and determine want components are in different materials. One of this ways is by dissolving the material in solvent this will only get the mixture of components for example the spinach had to be grind up with hexane to get the organic material separated from the pigments that will be separated even further. Next using a solvent and a polar compound like alumina, the pigments separated from the organic material could be run in a column in which those will be separated even more using polarity. As a more polar solvent is use to push the different rings of pigment, these are collected in their own test tubes to then be run in a TLC which will determine the polarity using the Rf values and then comparing them to the table in the organic lab manual ones. This is important because we want to know what some things are composed of and by using the polarity in different components makes it easier to determine them. The gain from this experiment is determining the different pigment of spinach and by doing so comparing the polarity of each of them. Then determine why that could be by looking at the structures of the pigments separated. Discussion: The first thing done in

More about Extraction of Spinach Lab

Open Document