Manganese gluconate (& other gluconates)

I was wondering how strongly pink manganese gluconate would be, so made it to find out! A hot calcium gluconate solution (solubility increases greatly near boiling) was mixed with a manganese sulphate solution in stoichiometric amounts; solution immediately became cloudy but it was stirred for some 15 minutes. After stirring a white ppt of presumably calcium sulphate quickly settled:


The solution was filtered and the filtrate boiled down to around 40ml. It was then transferred to a steam bath. A white with pale pink crust crystalized out and dried easily on the steam bath. The was this crystallized out of solution was a surprise, as both cobalt gluconate and copper gluconate when made similarly dried to a sticky mess that then had to boiled with xylene to get a dry free flowing salt (as reported elsewhere referenced below).


After crushing the product was looked a lot less pink! Yield was over 90%.


My earlier brief post on copper gluconate can be find here:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=16586&...

And cobalt here:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=78561&...

I don't think these are particularly interesting compounds but I thought good to get the pictures out as example of what the salts looks like. I will add to this post as I make gluconates.