Question

the outdoors club at school goes camping near the coast of new york. their advisor forgets to bring fresh water,and they are too far away from a store to purchase any. the advisor says, \wait a second! you all just learned about separation techniques in chemistry. put your heads together and find a way to purify this ocean water.\ you and some classmates gather some ocean water and bring it back to your camp. you find that there is some alcohol, sand and seaweed in your sample, and obviously, the sample is saltwater!
use the data above to construct a separation plan and write your response in paragraph format in the lines provided.

Explanation:

Step1: Remove seaweed

Since seaweed is insoluble in water, we can use filtration. Pour the ocean - water mixture through a filter (like a cloth or a coffee filter). The seaweed will be trapped on the filter, and the liquid (containing water, alcohol, and salt) will pass through.

Step2: Separate alcohol

Alcohol has a lower boiling point (\(76^{\circ}C\)) than water (\(100^{\circ}C\)). We can use distillation. Heat the filtered liquid. At \(76^{\circ}C\), alcohol will vaporize. Condense the alcohol vapor (using a condenser, or in a simple camping - style, we can use a cold surface like a metal pot lid placed above the heating container to collect the condensed alcohol).

Step3: Obtain fresh water

After removing alcohol, we are left with a salt - water solution. We can use evaporation (or simple distillation for better purity). Heat the salt - water solution. Water will vaporize at \(100^{\circ}C\). Condense the water vapor (again, using a cold surface to collect the condensed water). The salt will be left behind as it has a much higher boiling point (\(1465^{\circ}C\)).

Answer:

First, filter the ocean - water mixture to remove seaweed as it is insoluble. Then, distill the filtered liquid to separate alcohol (boiling at \(76^{\circ}C\)). Finally, distill the remaining salt - water solution to get fresh water (boiling at \(100^{\circ}C\)), leaving salt behind.