Messing around with vanadium
A while ago elementcollector1 sent me some vanadium and manganese for my element collection. Unfortunately, their vials got damaged in transit and for
the past few weeks I've been trying to devise a good method of separating them. One thing I've found is that citric acid will only dissolve vanadium -
manganese is left untouched.
I decided to run a few experiments on the mixture obtained on dissolution of vanadium - they're now located in this imgur gallery.
This leaves me with four questions:
1. What is the dark purplish precipitate? My guess is that I made vanadyl citrate, but I'm not entirely sure.
2. What's in the supernatant? It appears to be pale yellow, so I assume it's some vanadate, but that doesn't explain why the permanganate disappeared
instantly when added.
3. What happened to the supernatant when permanganate was added? It turned dark, then faded - indicating some reaction took place, but I'm not sure
what.
4. What is that red precipitate that formed on addition of samarium metal? I have reason to suspect it's samarium orthovanadate, but I feel the color
is off.
At the end of the day, simulating atoms doesn't beat working with the real things...
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