[shaggy]

Hey, im really stuck with how to seperate ethanol from wine, i know i need to evaporate it off from the wine solution and collect it in a flask through a condenser but what i dont know is how to extract the pure ethanol from this collected solution.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[enahs]

You can not.


Ethanol forms an Azeotrope with water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotrope

To get it is pure as you can (but not pure), look into Fractional Distillation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_distillation



More info:
http://www.ucc.ie/academic/chem/dolchem/html/comp/ethanol.html

[Arkcon]

For industrial purposes, the 95% ethanol-water azeotrope is separated by adding benzene.  This forms a trinary water-ethanol-benzene azeotrope that distills off first, then a binary benzene-ethanol azeotrope for the excess, leaving pure alcohol.  This "pure" alcohol remains few ppm contaminated with benzene, so is useless for diluting and imbibing -- people who violate that rule end up with a very specific type of liver cancer from benzene exposure.

You could try to remove the last 5% water with an anhydrous salt, but you will lose a lot of product, as the powder crystallizes into chunks trapping your ethanol.

If you need for some chemical application, it's better to just purchase it, benzene impurity and all.  If you intend to drink it, the criminality of bootlegging aside, just drink the 95% pure distillate -- it's just 5% water, drink 5% more and you're just as drunk.

[IITian]

Anhydrous CaO works well