How does fractional distillation separate out ethanol and water?

Answer 1

It does it very imperfectly........

Both ethanol and water are infinitely miscible, and both have very similar boiling points.

It follows that when we distil wine, to make brandy for instance, the distillate contains a lot of water. Ethanol or methanol as used in the laboratory as pure, anhydrous solvents takes a lot of work and care to prepare properly, and when you expose it to the atmosphere, you can actually see the volume of the liquid rise as it drinks up atmospheric moisture.

See this old answer.

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Answer 2

Jose Ayala

Fractional distillation separates ethanol and water based on their boiling points. Ethanol has a lower boiling point than water, so as the mixture is heated, ethanol vaporizes first. The vapor is then condensed and collected, resulting in the separation of ethanol and water.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.