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In chemistry and materials science, impurities are chemical substances inside a confined amount of liquid, gas, or solid. They differ from the chemical composition of the material or compound. [ 1 ] Firstly, a pure chemical should appear in at least one chemical phase and can also be characterized by its phase diagram .
This removes impurities in a substance that an electric current is run through; Sublimation is the process of changing of any substance (usually on heating) from a solid to a gas (or from gas to a solid) without passing through liquid phase. In terms of purification - material is heated, often under vacuum, and the vapors of the material are ...
Within the sciences, the word "contamination" can take on a variety of subtle differences in meaning, whether the contaminant is a solid or a liquid, [3] as well as the variance of environment the contaminant is found to be in. [2] A contaminant may even be more abstract, as in the case of an unwanted energy source that may interfere with a process. [2]
In chemistry, chemical purity is the measurement of the amount of impurities found in a sample. Several grades of purity are used by the scientific, pharmaceutical, and industrial communities. [1] [2] Some of the commonly used grades of purity include:
Recrystallization is a method used to purify chemicals by dissolving a mixture of a compound and its impurities, in an appropriate solvent, prior to heating the solution. [1] Following the dissolution of crude product, the mixture will passively cool, yielding a crystallized compound and its impurities as separate entities.
The notion of precipitation can also be extended to other domains of chemistry (organic chemistry and biochemistry) and even be applied to the solid phases (e.g. metallurgy and alloys) when solid impurities segregate from a solid phase.
Colors of a single chemical in different solvents, under visible and UV light, showing how the chemical interacts dynamically with its solvent environmentIn addition to the generic definition offered above, there are several niche fields where the term "chemical substance" may take alternate usages that are widely accepted, some of which are outlined in the sections below.
In atmospheric chemistry, the most common scavenger is the hydroxyl radical, a short-lived radical produced photolytically in the atmosphere. It is the most important oxidant for carbon monoxide, methane and other hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and most of other contaminants, removing them from the atmosphere.