can distillation be used to seperate air into oxygen,argon,nitrogen, carbon dioxxide, and so forth, please explain
2006-10-02 15:33:47 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Education & Reference ➔ Homework Help
No i do not think so. Distillation is a process where you heat q liquid mixture and seperate them using their difference in boiling point. In your case, the mixture are already in gaseous state. Hence, it is impossible to seperate them unless you are going to condense the vapor into their various liquid state, provided that they all have different boiling points.
2006-10-02 16:06:37 · answer #1 · answered by Michael M 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You'd need a process sort of opposite to distillation. Instead of heating that's used in distillation, you're cooling the mixture. Let's concentrate on separating oxygen and nitrogen in the air. The boiling point for oxygen is -182.97 degrees C and for nitrogen it's -195.81 degrees C. What this means is that oxygen will begin to liquify when the temperature drops below -182.97 and nitrogen begins to liquify below -195.81. So you'd need to cool the air to about -185 degrees. Once this temperature is reached, all the oxygen will condense to liquid and the remaining gas would be nitrogen. Now you can separate the two.
2006-10-03 01:12:24 · answer #2 · answered by Mech_Eng 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Distallation uses the fact that different compounds and elements change states at different temperatures.
In its gaseous state, air can not be further distilled as there is no way the states can be changed.
If air were in a solid or liquid form, technically it could be done. I'm not sure how easy it would be, but it could be done on paper.
2006-10-02 22:43:22 · answer #3 · answered by Slider728 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
spend more time in your text book and paying attention in class and less time on the internet and learn yourself
2006-10-02 22:43:40 · answer #4 · answered by Cars 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋