Chemical Forums

Chemistry Forums for Students => High School Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: Mianbao on May 06, 2018, 01:52:21 AM

Title: Immiscible liquids by fractional distillation
Post by: Mianbao on May 06, 2018, 01:52:21 AM

Hello all!

While oil and water can be easily separated by separating funnel, can fractional distillation be used to separate immiscible liquids (even of different boiling points), say the case of oil and water?

Title: Re: Immiscible liquids by fractional distillation
Post by: wildfyr on May 06, 2018, 11:38:32 AM

Yep, absolutely. Most combinations of compounds with boiling points greater than 20C or so apart can be separately fairly easily. The caveat is that, of course, there any many exceptions. It is really down in the dirty details of which exact solvents are involved to answer this though. Mineral oil and water are easily separated by distillation as a specific example.