can you purify water in a microwave?

Answer 1

Not by simply "zapping" it for a few seconds... you have to bring it to a boil but a kettle is more efficient than a microwave--and cheaper too!

You can also purify water (as long as it is not too polluted) by freezing it into ice cubes and then punching out the center with a coring blade. An ice cube freezes from the outside inward. Pure water freezes first at the outside and bit by bit, the impurities are forced to the center where they eventually freeze as a pocket. Commercial ice producers often use a punching device to get rid of this pocket so they can sell "pure" ice without the risk of passing on Hepatitis or whatever. That's why your ice often has holes in it when you get a drink at a restaurant.

Answer 2

In my opinion it is surrly no coz microwave is for heating or baking purpose not for water boiling.Yes you can boil the egg and potato in it.Don't try to boil water in it. Else you may have burnt your hand and destroyed your micro. Be it stove only for boiling. Or U can use water filters.

Not by simply "zapping" it for a few seconds... you have to bring it to a boil but a kettle is more efficient than a microwave--and cheaper too!

You can also purify water (as long as it is not too polluted) by freezing it into ice cubes and then punching out the center with a coring blade. An ice cube freezes from the outside inward. Pure water freezes first at the outside and bit by bit, the inpurities are foced to the center where they eventually freeze as a pocket. Commercial ice producers often use a punching device to get rid of this pocket so they can sell "pure" ice without the risk of passing on Hepatitis or whatever. That's why your ice often has holes in it when you get a drink at a restaurant.

Answer 3

This is a very interesting question, and it has gotten me to thinking. The answer is that you can't use a microwave as they are sold to efficiently purify water, but you might be able to do it inefficiently. Be warned that it will be a slow, frustrating process.

If you want to purify water so far as killing any micro-organisms that might happen to be floating around in it, then simply placing a microwave-safe container full of water in your microwave oven and turning it on will eventually do the trick. Allow the water to boil for a full 5 minutes and there should be nothing left alive.

But to remove other impurities such as heavy metals and mineral salts, you will have to boil the water off into steam. Most of the impurities will stay behind in the original container while the steam will mostly be nothing but water vapor. Collecting the steam and turning it back into fresh, pure water is called distillation.

The link below will take you to a page that explains the process of disstillation. Steam is boiled off of a source of water and collected in a tube that is cool because cold water surrounds it. The hot steam cools off in the tube, condenses back into water, and this pure distilled water is then collected for use.

You can do the same thing on a very small scale using your microwave oven. Have you ever noticed how the window steams up if you are boiling water in your microwave? That is water vapor recondensing on the cooler walls of the oven. If you boil a lot of water and wait until the window fogs up, then you can open the door and wipe the dew off with a towel. A very small amount of distilled water will be absorbed by the towel.

If you do this a lot of times, I mean a whole bunch, eventually the towel will be sopping wet and you can wring out a little bit of water into a bowl.

This is extremely ineffecient, though. The fan on your microwave will blow out a great deal of steam, as it is supposed to. You will have to boil gallons of water into steam just to get a few drops off of the towel. Still, it will work.

Another way is to get something cool, like a sheet of metal, and place it so the exhaust air from your microwave hits it. The steam from inside the oven will strike the metal, and some of the water vapor should recondense into water that will drip off of the sheet. Point one corner of the sheet towards the ground and most of the water will drip off at that corner. Place a bowl under the corner to collect pure water.

Again, this is extremely inefficient. Most of the water vapor will escape into the surrounding air without ever coming in contact with the sheet, so it will never get a chance to recondense back into water. You can increase the efficiency a bit by cooling the sheet off in the freezer for a few hours before starting, but even so it will take gallons of water boiled off to make any real progress.

If you are going to try this as a science fair project, then good luck!

James

Answer 4

No. If you boil it long enough to purify it, it will change to steam and burn you badly on opening the door of the microwave.

Answer 5

Purify It

Answer 6

Please Don't.

Microwave ovens can superheat water (especially pure water) to temperatures well over boiling. Then, when you pull the container out, it can "flash" boil and spew super hot water all over you.

You can get emergency-room burns this way.

Answer 7

Just boil it on the stove.