by 3 hours ago
ANSWERS: 3
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Boiling water kills many germs and bacteria. It does not however necessarily remove harmful chemicals, preformed toxins, or other heat stable potentially toxic/dangerous solutes.
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It is possible you are referring to distilling water. Boiling 3 minutes should kill any live bacteria. If you boil water and connect the steam vent to a distiller pipe, then the water that comes out should be pure water with all the residue left in the boiling pot. There are some substances that will stay in the pipe unless you do a careful temperature and pressure selection phase.
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Most purification techniques rely on the differential between important properties of the substances you are trying to separate. Boiling point is one of those properties. If there is something in the water that has a boiling point higher than 100 degrees Celsius, then you can boil the water away and collect it back to separate it and the contaminant. The same principle applies all over chemistry and biology, though usually properties other than boiling point are used. For example, you can separate compounds by molecular weight or by how hydrophobic they are or whatever. The key in all examples is that you pick a property that is different and find a way to use that to separate things out. Boiling is just a simple example of that.
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