Mass Separation: Crash Course Engineering #17

It can be really important to separate out chemicals for all kinds of reasons. Today we’re going over three different processes engineers use to achieve that separation: distillation, which separates substances based on their different boiling points; liquid-liquid extraction, which uses differences in solubility to transfer a contaminant into a solvent; and reverse osmosis, which filters molecules from a solvent by pressurizing it through a semipermeable barrier.

Crash Course Engineering is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios.

RESOURCES:

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/science/q-a-salt-water-and-fresh.html
https://www.grida.no/resources/5808
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/ethanol
https://www.britannica.com/science/distillation
http://www.srsengineering.com/our-products/distillation-columns/how-columns-work/
http://www.wermac.org/equipment/distillation_part2.html
https://www.aiche.org/resources/publications/cep/2015/november/design-principles-liquid-liquid-extraction
https://puretecwater.com/reverse-osmosis/what-is-reverse-osmosis#understanding-reverse-osmosis
https://www.veoliawatertechnologies.co.uk/technologies/reverse-osmosis
http://www.toraywater.com/knowledge/kno_001_01.html
https://www.pureaqua.com/reverse-osmosis-water-treatment-in-saudi-arabia/
https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/2051-separating-out-foods-into-component-molecules
https://www.explainthatstuff.com/chromatography.html