[jonny]

am fairly new to chemistry and apologize if the question and the description are too vague.if you think i lack basic background knowledge to deal with something like this, please point me to a resource, a book or anything that can help me in this regard

would like to know how to seperate NaI dissolved in water. please suggest a way to do so without heating and evaporation. like what compound should i add to the solution so that the NaI can react with that resulting in solid products, either lumps/signicantly sized suspended particles that can be filtered out.

additionally i would like to know how to find out, given a solvent (or any liquid compound), whether NaI dissolves in it or not. for eg: say that i have methanol, will NaI dissolve in it? for methanol i know the answer and its a yes. but how do i test solubility for any other compound. note that i should not have to carry out practical experiments to find out this.(it must be a known fact or can be deduced from some other known facts. does NaI have any "datasheet" of sorts?)

and finally, once i have any solution with NaI dissolved, how to seperate it without evaporation(but by some chemical reaction). for eg: how to seperate NaI from methanol? how to figure out the reactants i'll need?

[Borek]

would like to know how to seperate NaI dissolved in water. please suggest a way to do so without heating and evaporation. like what compound should i add to the solution so that the NaI can react with that resulting in solid products, either lumps/signicantly sized suspended particles that can be filtered out.

Problem is, your question is vague. "Separate" - what do you mean? Do you want to just recover NaI? If so, drying the solution out is the only viable approach. You can be able to recover some of teh salt, if the solubility changes with the temperature. But the question is - what it is that you really want? NaI is dissociated, you can relatively easy remove I^- from the solution, precipitating it with Ag⁺ - but you will be left with whatever counterion was present in the silver salt you used (most probably NO₃^-, as AgNO₃ is the only convenient silver salt for such applications). That means you will be left with a solution of NaNO₃ - will it be better?

additionally i would like to know how to find out, given a solvent (or any liquid compound), whether NaI dissolves in it or not. for eg: say that i have methanol, will NaI dissolve in it? for methanol i know the answer and its a yes. but how do i test solubility for any other compound. note that i should not have to carry out practical experiments to find out this.(it must be a known fact or can be deduced from some other known facts. does NaI have any "datasheet" of sorts?)

Are you aware of the fact everything dissolves in everything, and "insoluble" means just that the solubility is low? And as we often compare things in a relative way, what we call "soluble" in one solvent, can have solubility orders of magnitude lower than in another solvent? Yes, there are handbooks with tables of solubility (but they are not, and never will be, complete), yes, there are rules of thumb that say what to expect, but they are far from being perfect.

[jonny]

ok, what i really want is the solvent(water). so was trying to turn the NaI into a form that can be easily filtered out. NaNO₃ is fine if its easily filtered out. wont NaNO₃ also be in dissolved form?

further i also require a general answer i.e. how to find out what reactants are to be used in case the solvent is something else?

[Corribus]

ok, what i really want is the solvent(water). so was trying to turn the NaI into a form that can be easily filtered out. NaNO₃ is fine if its easily filtered out. wont NaNO₃ also be in dissolved form?

In that case, evaporation and subsequent condensation (basically, distillation) is probably the easiest way.

[Enthalpy]

I know no means to make numerical predictions about solubility. Qualitative predictions at best, but figures must be experimental.

This fantastic site has the solubility data and much more:
http://chemister.ru/Database/properties-en.php?dbid=1&id=760
I suggest to bookmark the address. The site has much data I sought for long without finding it.