[cattho1610]

Hi guys
I and my teammate used Gas Chromatography for the first time today in class to analyze the sample we made, but I'm having trouble reading the results. Can you guys help me?

The 1st graph is of 1-Butanol
The 2nd graph is of the 1-Bromobutane synthesized using that same 1-Butanol (with reflux and simple distillation)

The way I understand it, the 1st peak in the 2nd graph should be that of 1-Bromobutane and the 2nd peak should be that of traces of 1-Butanol. Is it correct? I'm a little bit unsure because the time in 2 graphs is different, 1st one is 3.723 and 2nd one is 3.110

[Babcock_Hall]

Is the top graph a standard?  Is the bottom graph from your experiment?  Was your product dissolved in a solvent prior to gas chromatography?

[cattho1610]

Is the top graph a standard?  Is the bottom graph from your experiment?  Was your product dissolved in a solvent prior to gas chromatography?

Hi!
Both is from my experiment, the top is of the alcohol and the bottom is of the product.
I made the product by letting the alcohol react with concentrated sulfuric acid and potassium bromide through reflux and then I distilled it and just use distilled product.

[Babcock_Hall]

When one identifies a substance using GC, one does so on the basis of the comparison between the retention times of a known standard and the unknown, the questioned sample.  Without a standard one can still compare retention times between two questioned samples, and there are some general principles that aid in the interpretation; for closely related molecules retention times correlate with boiling points.  Does this help?