• What is the most efficient way to seperate and obtain salt from a sand/salt mixture. I need to be accurate to within a 100th of a gram.


  • Good answer Ravi :)


  • If you do not have a vacuum pump available you will need to proceed under gravity, in other words just let the hot water drip through the filter paper (do not fold the filter paper so many times as you might normally to speed things up but beware that saturating the filter paper may cause it to rip). The vacuum pump sucks the solvent through allowing the procedure to be quicker and therefore allows you to use less solvent. By proceeding under gravity the solvent will also cool whilst the filtration takes place which means you should use more washes of the salt/sand mixture in the second phase to ensure all the salt is extracted successfully. If you use a hot plate you will need to take more care upon the evaporation. Try not to boil the liquid to vigorously as this may result in splashes and the loss of some of the salt.


  • Is the mixture wet or dry?


  • Also, I may not have an oven available either. Could this be done with a hot plate?


  • Answer: Add water and heat this mixture so that all the salt is dissolved. Filter this heated mixture. Sand will remain on filter paper/filtering agent. wash this sand with some more quantity of water in batches. Dry the sand in sunlight or IR lamp. Salt is in hot water. Boil this to evaporate all the water. you will get salt only.


  • I will most likely be using less than 50g to start out with. If I do not have a vacuum available, is there some other method that will produce similarly accurate results in a relatively short period of time?


  • 0.01 gram for how big of a quantity to start out with?


  • This is a common problem that is encountered in experimental chemistry and the standard method of solving it is this: 1) Heat an amount of pure distilled water in a clean flask to boiling point. If the water is not pure the final result will be inaccurate. 2) Leave this water boiling for a minute or two. Using a hot solvent means that you will require less to dissolve the salt. 3) Place the salt/sand mixture onto a filter paper on top of a Buchner flask. You should know the weight of the dry Buchner Flask. 4) Attach a vacuum to the bottom of the Buchner flask to provide a pressure to the filter paper. 5) Gradually pipette hot water onto the salt/sand filter paper. How much water you use at this stage will help determine the accuracy of the result. 6) After the salt/sand mixture has been fully saturated carefully remove the vacuum from the flask. The solution in this flask contains the majority of the salt. 7) Repeat steps 4,5 and 6 using a new Buchner flask and copious amounts of water to ensure all the salt has been dissolved. 8) With the two flasks of salt water carefully transfer these to an oven and bake them slowly rising the temperature to 200C. Preferably the oven should be attached to a vacuum to remove the water vapor as it evaporates. How long depends on the amount of water/solvent used. An oven is used as boiling the water may result in some loss of salt when bubbles are formed. 9) Periodically stir the salt mixture as the water evaporates to ensure all of the water is being evaporated. 10) After the water has evaporated crush the remaining salt in the Buchner flask to a powder (if possible) and bake for an additional few minutes to remove any residual water. 11) The amount of salt in your salt/sand mixture is the difference in mass from the inital mass of the Buchner Flasks and when you weigh the cooled Buchner flasks (remember to cool the flasks as the hot ones will weigh more!). Also remember that the mass obtained will also have a small contribution from dissolved solids that were present in the sand (unless the sand was sterile), this value will probably be insignificant when compared to the mass of salt (especially if the salt/sand mixture was obtained from the beach or sea). Apparatus needed: 2x Buchner Flasks (masses known) 2x Filter papers Drying oven (preferably vacuum capable) Dropping pippette Spatula (to mix and crush the salt as it evaporates in the oven)







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