how would you separate a mixture of oil,water, sugar and sand?

Answer 1

Oil would move to the surface and could be decanted off.

Sand would settle to the bottom and could be filtered off with a paper filter.

This leaves the sugar and water. Assume the sugar is soluble in the water. Bring the sugar water to a boil, boil off at least 50% water, and cool. Sugar will crystallize out and can be removed with a paper filter like the sand was.

Answer 2

It's always best to use a flow chart when separating the components of a mixture/solution. This is a heterogeneous mixture and is in 2 phases, solid and liquid which are easily separated by filtration, vacuum filtration using a buchner funnel would work best. Now you have removed the sand and have a mixture of oil and sugar water, the next logical step would be to put the mixture in a separatory funnel and drain the sugar water out of the bottom and and about 5 ml of deionized water to the funnel to remove any residual sugar water. Now we have removed the oil and are only left with an aqueous sugar solution which cannot be separated by mechanical means, only by chemical means can a solution be separated. I don't know what level I should be answering this question on, but if I were doing this I would distill off most of the water if I had to quantify the amount of water in the original mixture and then pump off the small amount of water left with the sugar on a direct line high vacuum overnight, but if I wasn't worried about the water I would crash out the crystals by adding a miscible solvent , such as diethyl ether or tetrahydrofuran(THF), until I reached the cloud point, (sol'n becomes cloudy), then I would cool the mother liquor in an ice bath, let the crystals form then filter off the supernatant solution and dry the sugar.

Answer 3

Mixture Of Oil And Water

Answer 4

I would separate the oil first by letting the mixture sit. Since oil is the least dense, I would just suck it up with some suction pipe. As for the sand, use a coffee filter or something. If you do this after the oil, you risk having the oil globules mix with the sand, in which case you would have to clean it. For the sugar, since it has a high melting point compared to water, just distill the water. Sugar is quite soluble, so it won't all crystallize out just by cooling it.

Answer 5

First of all, you will do fractional distillation (separation of a liquid from a liquid), water will evaporate at a lower temparature, you collect it, then you increasing temparature by adding heat so that oil will evaporate as well.

Now you have sand and sugar remaining. Add water to the sand-sugar mixture again and stir so that the sugar dissolves in the water. You then separate the sugar solution from the sand through filtration, the sand remains on the filter paper. Take the solution and do distillation so that the water evaporates and sugar remains in the evaporating flask

Answer 6

Filter the solution to remove the sand. The sugar is dissolved so it won't separate. Let the rest sit still and the oil will separate naturally and float to the top. Drain the oil and boil away the water to recover the sugar.

Answer 7

time
oil and water will separate naturally
remove oil

sand will settle
remove water

water and sugar will be in solution (unless the amount of sugar is above the solubility limit, in which case some will be filtered out in the sand)

evaporate the water to get the sugar
heat the sand to remove and water

Answer 8

Homework, hu? I will only show you the way: think of which is heavier: the water or the oil? The lighter one will float and it will be very easy to separate it. What will happen to the sand? The sugar will melt and mix with the water, but it doesn't evaporates, so, if all the water evaporates, where will the sugar be?

Answer 9

Easy enough to strain the sand/ sugar to separate it from the liquid. The water would eventually dry up, the oil could be soaked up afterwards. But to divide sugar from sand? that would be more difficult they both look alike.. maybe a special strainer of some sort but it might not get it all.

Answer 10

oil-simply by pouring it to another vessel
sand-it could be done next by filtering
water n sugar-heat the solution but in a closed container so that water does not evaporate..
and u r done