Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Separating copper and nickel

electrokinetic - 6-8-2012 at 18:39

Got a solution of an approx 11:1 copper chloride:nickel chloride solution, with whatever other ions come in tap water here in Los Angeles. I'd like to separate the copper from the nickel and both from all other trace ions. I have whatever chemicals can be reasonably found in a high school chem supply closet. Can anyone offer any suggestions other than electrolytic reduction (which I'm not sure would even work well)? Thanks

cyanureeves - 6-8-2012 at 18:47

there is already a big big thread on this.let us know which route you take and the out come.

plante1999 - 7-8-2012 at 00:04

UTFSE. This as been covered many time before.

MR AZIDE - 7-8-2012 at 11:11

If you want to try and get the elemental metals. Then I have though of this.

1) add carbonate or hydroxide solutions to then solution. This will precipitate the insoluble carbonates or hydroxides from the solution as a mixture.

2) wash and dry the precipitates, and heat them ( the mixture of the 2 insoluble Cu (ii) or Ni(ii) hydroxides / carbonates, untill they decompose to the Cu(ii) and Ni(ii) oxides.

3) use Al powder to use the aluminothermic thermite reaction to reduce the mixture of the 2 oxides to an impure mixture / possible alloy of the reduced Ni and Cu metals. ( some yield loss)

4) wash this mixture with dilute HCl or H2So4 to dissolve away any unreacted insoluble oxides. ( some yield loss)

5) react the resulting metals with conc HNO3, , this will produce soluble copper (ii) nitrate ,and hopefully the Ni which exhibits the property of be passivation, and will not react with the HNO3, ,and should be left behind......

6) repeating the carbonate / hydroxide precip with the Copper (ii) nitrate, and alumono thermic reduction / acid wash etc will separate the copper.

I think this would work, but i think there would be quite a few % yield losses with this. This would inly be useabke if you had a LOT of initial solution.

Ni is fairly magnetic, so is Ni(ii) oxide maybe very weakly magnetic......? could you separate the oxide mixtures this way....?

m1tanker78 - 7-8-2012 at 11:56

As others mentioned, there's already a hefty thread on this very topic. Since you have access to some reagents, you may be able to plug some holes and answer some unknowns.

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=16811

Are you after the nickel or do you simply want to purify the copper solution? If you have the means to produce and manage H2S gas, that's one method that's been proposed but not demonstrated in the thread I referenced above. It would be much easier if you were starting from the alloy rather than a solution of the metals.

Tank

electrokinetic - 7-8-2012 at 12:14

Sorry, deserve to get flamed. You all are correct, there is a very lengthy post on this and I should have been more diligent finding it. I'll try those ideas and report back any results.

electrokinetic - 7-8-2012 at 12:22

Unfortunately, H2S is beyond my abilities at this point.

Quote: Originally posted by m1tanker78  
As others mentioned, there's already a hefty thread on this very topic. Since you have access to some reagents, you may be able to plug some holes and answer some unknowns.

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=16811

Are you after the nickel or do you simply want to purify the copper solution? If you have the means to produce and manage H2S gas, that's one method that's been proposed but not demonstrated in the thread I referenced above. It would be much easier if you were starting from the alloy rather than a solution of the metals.

Tank