Can sublimination be used in the project to isolate a particular soil compound?

Question

Can sublimination be used in the project to isolate a particular soil compound?

While the soil compound possibly contains CuCl2, CoSO4, NiCl2 Biphenyl, Benzoic acid, Camphor , m-Nitroaniline and Napthalene.

How does the boiling point and the melting point of these compound tells you rather sublimination can be use or not?

Answer 1

The 5 last given compounds (the organic ones) could, at least in theory, be recovered by sublimation they are all solids at RT. It just has to have a reasonable vapor pressure under vacuum (and keep the temperature below the melting points of the organic compounds otherwise it technically isn't sublimation). Note: if you are trying to find a process which will separate the different components sublimation doesn't give very good separation when several volatile solids are all in together. It might be faster to extract the organic portion of the comtaminant materials with a suitable organic solvent, then separate by some form of chromatography. The copper and nickel chlorides as well as the cobalt sulfate will extract with water.