Question

For purification techniques percent recovery is an important number – why is reporting percent recovery more important that the final mass?

Answer 1

The percent recovery is important in the purification techniques like the percent yield in the other chemical reactions.

Whenver we purify a compound , we want that maximum of it must be purified.

If we say we get the purified amount as 99 g from 100g impure compound , then it is a good number.

But if we say the same amount has been obtained from the 1000g impure compound , then it is a bad number.

Because it is 900 g of the compound that we could not purify as compared to 1 g in earlier case.

So the final mass obtained is not much important than the percent recovery.