For a stormwater drain and was wondering if.....

Question

For a stormwater drain and was wondering if you would be able to separate two liquids (underground) by boiling off the one at the lower temp rate. is that possible and if not do you have any other ideas on separating mixtures (that could work in a drain). Please help

Answer 1

Hey Ta,

 

GREAT QUESTION!

 

You're absolutely right. You can definitely separate two liquids by boiling one at the lower temperature. This is called simple distillation. Assuming the two liquids have significantly different boiling points, this would be quite a simple separation technique. However, there are other methods of separation that I think you could look into: separating funnels, chromatography, filtration, crystallization, decantation, precipitation, fractional distillation etc.