xcv826 - 23-2-2014 at 13:57
I was thinking of Copper chloride and Sodium sulfate (not bi-sulfate). what are your opinions on this particular synthesis?
[Edited on 23-2-2014 by xcv826]
Metacelsus - 23-2-2014 at 14:09
Nope. Copper sulfate is more soluble than sodium sulfate. You might be able to pull it off if you had an ion-exchange resin, though.
Where I live, copper sulfate is OTC as root killer.
TheChemiKid - 23-2-2014 at 17:59
Why don't you:
1) Boil Copper in Sulfuric Acid
2) Add Copper to mix of Hydrogen Peroxide (3% is adequate) and Sulfuric Acid
3) Electrolyze Sulfuric Acid with Copper and Carbon Electrodes
xcv826 - 1-3-2014 at 14:06
im not using sulfuric acid, im trying to get it by doing the method i mentioned, just see if its possible. maybe after mixing copper chloride and
sodium sulfate, the copper sulfate will crystalize before sodium sulfate? or the opposite? there has to be some way to seperate the two, weather
chemically or conventionally.
[Edited on 1-3-2014 by xcv826]
Galinstan - 1-3-2014 at 17:43
@ TheChemiKid you can boil sulphuric acid with copper in it all day and it won't make any copper sulphate as the sulphate or bisulphate ion are not
oxidizing enoughe to make CuO from copper metal so no reaction will take place although your other two methods will produce weak solutions of CuSO4
Mesa - 2-3-2014 at 19:41
Electrolysis of other metal sulphates(I've used Al and Mg to date) in a divided cell using copper electrodes worked for me. Although I could not give
any guesses as far as purity.
A small section cut from a tyvek suit worked well enough as a makeshift membrane FWIW.
Theoretic - 5-3-2014 at 21:56
Galinstan: the atmospheric oxygen will react with copper, and the oxide layer will keep constantly dissolving in sulfuric acid, producing copper
sulfate
xcv826 - 5-3-2014 at 22:50
im not going any route with electrolysis.
MrHomeScientist - 6-3-2014 at 10:30
If you don't want to use acids or electrolysis, then you're making things unnecessarily hard for yourself. By simple mixing of copper chloride and
sodium sulfate, you have a solution with a bunch of ions floating around - Na+, Cu2+, Cl-, and
SO42+. To find out whether a certain combination of these ions can be precipitated, you need to look at the solubilities of all
the possible combinations. The wikipedia solubility table is very useful for this.
If you made the solution while hot and cooled it down to try precipitating something, sodium sulfate (being the least soluble) would crystallize out.
So no, it's unlikely this will work. Copper sulfate is readily available at hardware stores as root killer in the plumbing section. Cheddite Cheese
mentioned both of these points in the first response in the thread.
[Edited on 3-6-2014 by MrHomeScientist]
AJKOER - 12-3-2014 at 05:55
Try this, add copper to aqueous ammonia plus H2O2. Over night you will witness the formation of Cu(NH3)4(OH)2, in an aqua blue solution.
Now, add MgSO4 hydrate (Epsom salt). Filter out the white precipitate of Mg(OH)2. You now have Cu(NH3)4SO4. The last step is to destroy the NH3 by
adding (speculation, I have not performed this part), say H2O2, and see if a massive amount of N2 is released with time (less than a day). Another
possible way to remove the ammonia complex, just boil the solution (outdoors). Last suggestion, isolate the dry salt tetrammine copper(II)sulfate and
heat. This would be the reverse reaction of its preparation, see http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=tetra%20amine... There is some direct support for this method to remove ammonia based on a study
(see http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=thermal%20dec... ) of the thermal decomposition of Copper tetra ammine dithionate where ammonia is
released in the early stage of decomposition.
If successful, the product is CuSO4 from simple available household chemicals.
[EDIT] Now, I do not claim that such CuSO4 is cheaper than a root killer. However, such a commercial product does not need to be made from high purity
copper (some heavy metal impurity is acceptable) and there could also be other unwanted additives to the root killer.
[Edited on 12-3-2014 by AJKOER]
TheChemiKid - 12-3-2014 at 07:22
I know this would be hard to perform, but you could try adding Sulfur Trioxide to Copper (II) Oxide.
Metacelsus - 12-3-2014 at 14:16
Sulfuric acid would be sufficient for that.
TheChemiKid - 12-3-2014 at 16:16
Yes, but that was already stated before.
Zyklon-A - 12-3-2014 at 18:10
"Hard to preform", is an understatement, if you have SO3, you could easily get sulfuric acid.
TheChemiKid - 13-3-2014 at 12:52
Haha, you can say that again. I just added that for another method, I didn't actually mean it very practically.