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How to Carry Out Volatilization

Volatilization a process whereby a solution evaporates into the surrounding atmosphere. This process occurs naturally for many solutions at room temperature. For example, a glass of water left out for a week will volatize naturally and eventually completely evaporate. If you want to speed up the volatilization of a liquid, you can apply heat and vacuum to the solution. This requires some basic lab equipment, but it will dramatically speed up the volatilization time of the solution.

Things You'll Need

Hotplate
Filtering beaker with stopper
Vacuum hand pump

Instructions

- 1
  Fill the filtering beaker with a solution and place the stopper firmly on top of it. Towards the top of the beaker neck is a small spout. This is where you attach the vacuum pump.
- 2
  Attach the vacuum hand pump tube to the small spout on the neck of the beaker. Make sure the tube fits snuggly to the spout so that there are no leaks.
- 3
  Pump the hand pump several times to reduce the pressure inside the beaker. Some hand pumps have pressure gauges attached to them. Try to reduce the pressure to 0 ATM or PSI, which is effectively a total vacuum.
- 4
  Place the beaker onto the hotplate.
- 5
  Turn on the hotplate. The hotplate warms the bottom of the flask and its containing solution. The low pressure environment lowers the boiling point of the solution, which rapidly speeds up volatilization. You will start to see bubbles forming on the bottom of the solution. This is the liquid volatilizing into a gas.

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