I'd say the one from post #9 would work ok, but it would be quite slow. You would probably heat the edges a bit, and the water in there would evaporate, and you would get some reflux happening. Also, the humidity within the whole thing would be very close to 100%, which would reduce the rate at which the water would evaporate from the central container. These two things would make the experiment slower and might make it difficult to purify all the water. And finally, you should never heat a sealed container, it can explode. Make sure, if you use this method, to have some opening for the pressure to escape. If you were to use this method then you might also consider running cold water over the top of the foil, which would cool it so condensation would occur more rapidly. If that's too fiddly, maybe just put some ice up there.

the teacher is partly right, but due to the losses you`de get in your other design in the way of steam and evaporation into free air and a smaller condensing surface area, #9 would work the best, just don`t go too crazy with the heat in the center

Any way, my teacher is just wanting us to find a way of evaporation and condensation which is better than the lab equipment.........

 

Any way, I would make another design on the method....

 

thx for the responds..

 

Albert

you`ll be hard pushed to beat a proper condensor used in Lab kit, or the water distiller used in most labs for reagent dillution, some can do 10 litres in half an hour

Good plans, but I thought the whole idea was to come up with something OTHER than distillation? Reverse osmosis would be a bit more difficult, but practical.

hell yeah! grow sanfire or seaweed and extract the juices

I was thinking more along the lines of pressurizing the saline solution, and passing it through a dialysis membrane.

Excellent call! and it`s not standard Lab kit, so the teacher can`t complain either

precisely!