laboratory condenser

A distillation setup using a Liebig-type condenser (the tilted double-walled tube at the center). A liquid (not visible) in the flask at left is heated by the blue mantle to the boiling point. The vapor is then cooled as it goes through the inner tube of the condenser. There it becomes liquid again, and drips into the smaller collecting flask at right, immersed in a cooling bath. The two hoses connected to the condenser circulate water through the space between the inner and outer walls. In chemistry, a condenser is laboratory apparatus used to condense vapors – that is, turn them into liquids – by cooling them down.

Condensers are routinely used in laboratory operations such as distillation, reflux, and extraction. In distillation, a mixture is heated until the more volatile components boil off, the vapors are condensed, and collected in a separate container. In reflux, a reaction involving volatile liquids is carried out at their boiling point, to speed it up; and the vapors that inevitably come off are condensed and returned to the reaction vessel. In Soxhlet extraction, a hot solvent is infused onto some powdered material, such as ground seeds, to leach out some poorly soluble component; the solvent is then automatically distilled out of the resulting solution, condensed, and infused again.