How to seperate glycerol and water

This is a mind boggling thing, both glycerol and water are hydrophilic. So how can their mixtures be separated. Glycerol is a three carbons compound having three hydroxyl groups attached to it, that is at carbon number 1,2 and 3 respectively. Which method can be employ to separate them. We can use distillation, filtration.....Anybody with suggestion? as we brainstorm!!

Comments

  1. Chemistry and Biochemistry Academy14 July 2014 at 03:55

    this gentleman think electrolysis can be the best method. Read this!!
    here's a light bulb moment.
    if you do a 2 stage process, electrolysis can separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen without effecting the glycerol.
    here's why:
    for electrolysis separation to occur, the substance you wish to separate must be an electrolyte.
    water is an electrolyte, but glycerol (aka glycerin) is not.
    so the water will turn to gas while the glycerol stays in it's molecular form.

    how to separate the salts is, to me, undiscovered.

    however, if you need an extremely dry, air tight chamber for testing electrostatic experiments, this is simple and cheep.
    it only takes a few but no more than 12 volts DC to do so.

    car battery anyone?

    if you'd like, the gases released from this process are hydrogen and oxygen, so if you filter out the hydrogen and fuel your hydrogen fuel cell car then you're really got it good!



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