I am confused on the whole concept of recrystallization. Can someone explain it to me?

-- Kathleen Belus (Puuhbear419@yahoo.com), April 01, 2001

Answers

I found on a ood websight that explains recrystaization better than I could... If you go to http://www.chem.uky.edu/courses/che115/ recryst.html you'll find a more in depth answer to your question. Here's what I learned from tha websight:

Recrystallization is the most common method of purification of solids. Sometimes sublimation, fractional crystallization, zone melting, or even distillation are used to purify solids, but recrystallization is generally easiest and the first method to be tried. Recrystallization is not used for any other common purposes, except for growing specially formed crystals under controlled conditions.

Recrystallization is a separation process. The object is to obtain one component of a solid mixture free from contamination by any other components originally present in the mixture. Recrystallization involves three basic steps:

(1) dissolution of the solid to be purified in some hot solvent,

(2) followed by formation of crystals as the solution cools,

(3) and finally recovery of the purified crystals, usually by filtration.

-- Christi Stahl (cstahl_7@hotmail.com), April 02, 2001.