Other day i decided to concentrate 30% acetic acid. I thought to do this with magensium sulfate. I dehydrated epsom salt on hotplate, powderised white
cacke and added powder to acetic acid. This rised concentration to something like 70% after standing and mixing but most of product was adsorbed by
fine salt.
According to this experiment one can not dry this way anything that contains more than 20% of water because most of product will be lost. Is this
normal or maybe i just did something wrong? Are there effective ways to get absorbed product out of drying matter? What are best drying agents if lot
of water needs to be eliminated and adsorption tends to be a problem?
Please do not discuss here other methods of concentrating acetic acid because i know them quite well and there are other threads for this. Acetic acid
is just example here.