Junk_Enginerd - 18-6-2020 at 12:07
I can't quite get my head around this.
Assumption: If I have a mix of water and some inert oil that boils at 120°C, and I want to separate them by distillation, I can add something like
calcium chloride to make the water stay in the pot, and allow the oil to boil off. The salt will effectively raise the boiling point of the water, or
lock it together with the salt depending on how you want to see it. Correct?
But the salt won't ascend with the water vapor, that's one of the basic points of distilling. So we're getting pure water vapor, which has a boiling
point of 100°C. Yet, the liquid solution it just left is (for example) 130°C. Does it just magically drop 30°C as it evaporates? Or does it stay at
130°C?
I had this though because I was trying to steam distill some pine wood, hoping to extract some oils and/or turpentine. It failed, because I missed the
part where the steam needs to be about 150-200°C , so you can't just boil some sticks lol. I thought maybe adding calcium chloride or something like
it to the water could allow me to raise the temperature of the vapor enough to just boil a pot with sticks and condense the vapors, rather than heat
the steam separately...