Scope Of Separation Methods:

We have learnt that the separation science deals with a variety of problems at hand. Now, it may be necessary to illustrate the utility of separations by citing example from daily life to various branches of science and technology. The number of even the important examples is so large that they cannot be recounted here. However, by citing a few, you will be able to appreciate the significance of separations.

The art of separations is not new to the present day community of scientists. Even our ancestors were familiar with the various separation methods and were using them for their daily needs. An extremely typical example is the distillation of alcohol for drinking and other purposes. Isolation of several dyes for coloring reasons from natural materials is a good testimony of their skill for achieving separations. They were also quite proficient in isolating metals for their use from ores by applying different separation procedures. A number of drugs used to be isolated from plants and herbs. The treatment of waters by solid adsorbents is as old as the civilization. There are records available in which in the time of Aristotle and sand filters were used for a purification of sea water and impure drinking water.  Moses used tree branches to create bitter water sweet.

Separation processes play a key role in our daily life. We erase undesirable gases and particles from the air we breathe. The municipal drinking water undergoes various purification steps. It is well known in which the identification and removal of contaminants from food are hugely possible because of separation processes. A single of best examples of use of separations in industry is the availability of a variety of products from crude petroleum. The nuclear age did really take off due to improvements in the methods of separation of U²³⁸ and U²³⁵. The need of high purity materials in industry, particularly for semiconductor, is met due to advancements in separation processes.