Hello everyone, today I want to talk on how we can separate chemical substances.
Speration Technics are the physical methods for the separation of mixture in other to remove the impurities and hence obtain more samples of the chemical substance.
Common Separation Technics
Sieving
It is used to separate solid of different sizes. The mixture is paced on a sieve with mesh of a particular size. Particles smaller than the mesh will pass through, while the particles bigger than the mesh will stay back.
Filtration
This is the method of separating insoluble particles from liquid through the pores of a filter paper. The method is based on the difference in physical state of matter and insolubility of one component of the mixture. During filtration, liquid passes through the paper while the solid stays back on the paper. An example of mixture by filtration is the suspension of chalk dust in water.
Decantation
This is a method used to separate of liquid and denced solid particles which separates into two different layers on standing. The upper layer of pure liquid is carefully poured out from the bottom portion into another container. This is quick but inaccurate method of separating mixture.
Evaporation
This is a method of separating a desolved solute from a solution by heating the mixture to dryness so that the liquid portion with a lower vapour pressure than the solid is removed from the solid portion. Eg; salt solution.
In this process, the solvent is usually sacrifice, a water bathe or sand bathe is used to bring about a steady rate of evaporation.
Distillation
This is used to recover a solvent from a solution. In other words, it is a process of vaporizing a liquid and then condensing the vapour.
The vapour passes along a condenser which is cooled down by circulating water into the outer jacket.
Fractional Distillation
This is used to separate mixtures of 2 or more mix liquid with close temperature into it's component fraction. A fractionating column is introduced in between the distillating flask and the condenser, it is packed with glass beads. And this is were the actual speration is carried out. The process is repeated untill all the component fraction in a mixture is seperated. This method is mainly used in separating coal to useful things like; Diesel, petrol, petrochemicals, kerosene, gas e.t.c.
Centrifugation
A centrifuge is a machine that spins test tubes containing suspension at high speed. The spin causes heavier solid particles in the suspension to be thrown to the bottom of the test tubes. They settle these while the clear liquid separate but as an upper layer which can later decanted.
Magnetic separation
A magnet is used to separate magnetic substances from non-magnetic particles. This method is used in steel industry to remove impurities.
Reference
Hidden Facts in Chemistry by Newton Oleh.
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