DougTheMapper - 20-7-2008 at 22:21
Hi everybody, I have a problem. I'm synthesizing sulfuric acid by reacting HCl with CuSO4 to form CuCl2 and H2SO4. Unfortunately, I cannot find a way
to separate the two without neutralizing my acid.
Although there are a million ways to make CuCl2, I would like to keep the products of this reaction for making blue fireworks. I can easily recover
the CuCl2 from the acid with sodium bicarbonate, since the produced sodium sulfate is not soluble in water, but If at all possible, I'd like to keep
the acid for other things.
Ideas?
Thanks,
DTM
12AX7 - 20-7-2008 at 23:16
That doesn't work. You could distill, except HCl is considerably more voltatile than H2SO4, which is why it doesn't work.
Neutralize CuSO4 with base (evidently some ammonia added will improve purity), boil to decompose the Cu(OH)2 to black CuO, then dissolve in HCl after
washing. Additionally, you can neutralize the CuCl2 solution to get Cu(OH,Cl), a more stable chlorine-copper compound.
Tim