How can compounds in a mixture be separated?

1 Answer
Jun 14, 2018

Filtration, Decanting, Evaporating/Distillation, Precipitation Reactions

Explanation:

As stated above, those are some methods of separating chemicals. Usually in organic chemistry when you have multiple chemicals of similar polarity, you need to boil the mixture and condense the vapour back into liquid.

This works in the way that chemicals have different boiling points and so will evaporate from solution before or after the other chemicals. This is a common way of separation, especially for volatile liquids. Look at the diagram below. You boil the mixture and collect the vapour. The gas will pass through the glass tube where cool water runs and will condense the vapour into the chemicals pure form.

This technique is known as Distillation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_distillation