Separation of gasses (oxygen from hydrogen)

The gasses will not sepparate, not sure which law though.

This makes sense if you think about it on the molecular level.

Ah I thought I was right ..... Thanks Einherjar

I think you are looking for Brownian movement (spelling) Since the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen will explode when a shaft of sun light falls on it or other trivial reasons, likely no one will test the theory. How about hydrogen and carbon dioxide or hydrogen and freon 12 ? The latter is a vapor instead of a gas. My guess is gases gravity separate partially at low temperatures, where the molecular activity is reduced. If the light gas is on top at the start of the experiment 50% mixing may take days. Neil

you can certainly separate gases in a mixture. Thats how we make mixtures of gases from air, by cryogenic means. Gases have different thermal velocities so gaseous diffuesion and centrifuging also works. Centrifuging only "enriches"
Thats how we make atomic bombs. nuff said

There are several separation methods- some off of the top of my mind are:

If there is nothing mixing the two gasses, oxygen at the same temperature and pressure is 16 times as dense as hydrogen. Mixing can result from random movement (so called Brownian) that will increases with increasing temperature, or by reaction (hydrogen and oxygen are explosively reactive at room temperature).

So a settling process can be used to separate the gas mixture by drawing hydrogen off of the top of a ling skinny column. In addition this density separation process can be encouraged by placing in a centrifuge to enhance the mass differences. Diffusion separation uses the condition that both gasses are a thermal equilibrium and that the molecular speed (kinetic energy) of the two gasse in a mixture are equal, but since molecular masses are significantly different, the mean free path (a function of molecular velocity) of hydrogen will be greater than that of the heavier oxygen molecule. Diffusion uses this phenomena to strip the hydrogen from the mixture.

Another process is to strip off the oxygen by reacting it with a third reactant. This is possible since oxygen is a more reactive with other reactants then hydrogen--in this process the hydrogen will be enriched as the oxygen in the mixture is removed.

Another method of separation is distillation. Hydrogen and Oxygen are different gasses with different physical properties. So one gas will condense (turn to a solid or a liquid) at a higher temperature than the other. This difference in condensation temperature can be used for distillation.

Nevertheless, hydrogen oxygen gas mixtures are an explosive mixture--one with the widest explosive concentrations known. So whatever separation process used, a major condition of separation is to avoid detonation. One explosion can really ruin your day.

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