You have an inexpensive heartburn tablet that is primarily calcium carbonate (Ca

Question

You have an inexpensive heartburn tablet that is primarily calcium carbonate (CaCO3), sucrose (sugar) with a small amount of mineral oil and wish to isolate the calcium carbonate from two tablets (2.85 g each) Assume mineral oil has a density of 0.84 g/mL and is immiscible with water and ethanol. Propose a separation scheme to isolate the desired compound. You may need to look up physical constraints such as boiling point, density, and solubility.

Here are the filtration techniques you can use: centrifugation, gravity filtration (pippete and paper), solvent evaporation, and syringe filtration.

Explanation / Answer

Sucrose is highly soluble in water.

The method for separation would be,

1. Add minimal amount of water.

2. Add hexane to the mixture. shake well, mineral oil would preferentially go in water. This is due to non-polar interaction of oil with hexane. (like-dissolved-like, both are hydrocarbon in nature). Separate the hexane layer. Should be th upper layer in separatory funnel. This should remove all mineral oil from tablet.

3. concentrate the remaining solution, the salt CaCO3 precipitates out of solution nd settles down in the flask. Filter it through a filter paper. and wash with minimum amount of cold water.

the residue on filter paper is the desired CaCO3, which can be dried and weighed. this is the isolated compound for experiment.

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