In this video i make benzene by reacting sodium benzoate with sodium hydroxide and heat to free the benzene. we distilled it off and collected the rather impure orange distillate.
I had to make a special retort for this purpose using a bit of broken glassware and a 500mls paint can. using a glass flask would have been better but the fact that glass is attacked by hot NaOH and the shock when cooling the mass in the flask would crack it if it even lasted that long... so steel it is.

We washed this crude distillate with a couple of portions of distilled water and dried it with calcium chloride. Next we distilled the crude but washed benzene and collected 96mls of clear purified benzene.

We also did a burn test...

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