Daily applications of precipitation
Precipitation helps us to do useful things in our daily life.
Precipitation is used in sewage treatment plants to remove unwanted substances and bacteria. These substances will become precipitates at the bottom of the sewage water.
Precipitation is used to make pigments and dyes.
A Sewage treatment plant
Pigments of different colors
That’s cool!
Precipitation reactions are used in laboratories to identify and unknown solution. For example, if we know that solution ‘X’ reacts with solution ‘Y’ to form a precipitate ‘Z’, we can use this information to identify the unknown solution ‘X’. This is done by mixing it with solution ‘Y’ to see if it forms the precipitate ‘Z’. This method of analyzing an unknown solution is called qualitative analysis.