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How is pure oxygen seperated and made pure?
I am curios about this. How is oxygen taken seperated from all the other gases pollen ,etc in the air.. I am in the 9th grade and my teacher Sister Anne Marie couldn't answer it. Do you know how fractional distillation works? A mixture of liquids can be separated (unless they form an azeotrope) by carefully heating them and allowing them to evaporate (and be condensed and collected) one at a time. This is how, for example, ethyl alcohol (with 5% water by volume) can be isolated from anything fermented. Oxygen (and nitrogen, and argon) is obtained by the fractional distillation of liquid air. Unless there's a particular need for liquid oxygen, it isn't re-condensed, but otherwise the process is exactly similar to distilling whiskey. Of course, anything (like pollen or other dust) which doesn't evaporate is left behind.
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