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woelen
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I made solvated electrons without need of liquid ammonia
This is a very interestingt experiment which I want to share with you. Soon a web page will follow about this, but I now already want to let you know.
I purchased some lithium metal for a good price: http://www.ebay.nl/itm/281364082120?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT...
This lithium really is as clean and oxide-free as the picture shows. Fantastic stuff for a great price, I have given very positive feedback! I store
it in an exceptionally well sealed bottle under pressurized butane gas. A few of these 'buttons' I keep in a smaller container, so that I do not
always have to open the bigger container with the nice Li-sample.
I took appr. 2 ml of (nearly) anhydrous ethylene diamine in a test tube and added one piece of lithium (size appr. 8 mm length and 3 to 4 mm
diameter). When this is done, then initially not much seems to happen. The piece of lithium becomes covered with a greyish layer, just as if it were
kept in plain air for a few minutes.
After 5 minutes or so, however, small bubbles of gas are formed at the lithium, slowly. This gas must be hydrogen. The color of the lithium shifts to
blue. When the test tube is swirled, then the blue color disappears but in a few seconds it becomes blue again. After another 5 minutes, there is much
more blue material around the lithium and on shaking the blue color persists in the ethylene diamine, but it slowly disappears when the test tube is
allowed to stand for a few tens of seconds. After a few minutes agian, a very dark blue solution is obtained and when the test tube is shaken, then a
lot of the very dark blue liquid sticks to the glass. In a second or 3, the blue color simply disappears, while the liquid remains sticking to the
glass. It is a very weird thing to see the liquid sticking to the glass losing its intense blue color in seconds and become colorless (somewhat
opalescent white). This shaking can be repeated many times for many minutes. It is a very nice demonstration. I'll try to make a movie from this for
my upcoming web page.
I also dropped a few drops of this intensely colored blue liquid in water. When this is done, then the drops at once lose their color when they touch
the water, a soft hiss is produced (production of gas) and a clear soliution is obtained (ethylene diamine and LiOH in water).
The reaction must be as follows:
Li --> Li(+) + e
The Li(+) ions and the free electrons both are solvated by the ethylene diamine. The solvated Li(+) ion simply is colorless, the solvated electron is
deep blue.
When the deep blue liquid is dropped in water, then the following happens:
2e + 2 H2O --> OH(-) + H2
Free solvated electrons cannot coexist with water.
The lithium ions do not react (except probably there will be ligand exchange from ethylene diamine to water).
The change of color from deep blue to colorless on the wall of the test tube is probably due to absorption of oxygen from the air:
4e + O2 --> 2 O(2-), which combines with the lithium and ethylene diamine to form a substituted amide and hydroxide:
O(2-) + NH2CH2CH2NH2 --> OH(-) + NH2CH2CH2NH(-)
Initially some gas is produced. This most likely is the reaction of lithium with a small amount of water in the ethylene diamine (it was sold to me as
99+ %, it most likely contains at least a few tenths of percents of water). Once the water is used up, then the solvation of free electrons occurs.
If you have pure ethylene diamine and a small piece of lithium (if it has an oxide layer, then just wait a little longer, but the experiment still
works), then you really should try this experiment!
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Loptr
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I recall reading that amines are suitable solvents to solvate electrons. (I can't find the reference, but dug this up on wikipedia--I know).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvated_electron#Properties
| Quote: |
Focusing on ammonia solutions, all of the alkali metals, as well as Ca, Sr, Ba, Eu, and Yb, dissolve to give the characteristic blue solutions. Other
amines, such as methylamine and ethylamine, are also suitable solvents.
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Solvated electrons in solution are beautiful!
[Edited on 13-8-2014 by Loptr]
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arkoma
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Hmmm, I smell a Birch.........
Pretty nifty, Woelen. Shame the damned EU regs are gonna stifle your experiments soon. *sigh*
EDIT-it's come to my attention that my beginning statement might be misconstrued as thinking Woelen might be running a Birch Meth synth. NOT EVEN
CLOSE to what I meant. Not to mention the fact that drug chemistry is not the "only" use of reductions. Woelen has mentioned the hazards of
LiAlHydride--an empty baggie that had contained it caught on fire. Do I think he is making drugs? No. Get your minds out of the gutter peeps.
[Edited on 8-13-2014 by arkoma]
Edit--
| Quote: | Modifications of the Birch reduction[edit]
Since liquid ammonia has to be condensed into the flask and has to evaporate overnight after the reaction is complete, the whole procedure can be
quite troublesome and time-consuming. However, alternative solvents have been employed, such as THF[41][42] as well as a mixture of n-propylamine and
ethylenediamine,[43] both with comparable results. The latter one actually is a modification of the Benkeser Reaction, which in its original forms
tends to reduce naphthalene all the way to octahydro- and decahydronaphthalene. |
from wikipedia
[Edited on 8-13-2014 by arkoma]
"We believe the knowledge and cultural heritage of mankind should be accessible to all people around the world, regardless of their wealth, social
status, nationality, citizenship, etc" z-lib
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Brain&Force
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I seriously hope we'll see a write-up on this soon! Solvated electrons with ethylenediamine is probably the only feasible method for me to do this.
There's a video of ytterbium dissolving in ammonia:
<iframe sandbox width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_-0BBk9CawU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
[Edited on 13.8.2014 by Brain&Force]
At the end of the day, simulating atoms doesn't beat working with the real things...
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Crowfjord
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That's really neat, woelen! I've wanted to try this for a really long time, but have been quite wary of lithium and other alkali metals. I would love
to try something like this for an actual Birch reduction (that's a synthesis of a 1,4-cyclohexadiene from a benzene, for those that do not know). Do
you plan on trying something like that?
Here are a couple related threads:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=10238
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=13161
[Edited on 14-8-2014 by Crowfjord]
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sbreheny
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Just curious - which EU regs are you referring to?
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arkoma
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https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=23...
"We believe the knowledge and cultural heritage of mankind should be accessible to all people around the world, regardless of their wealth, social
status, nationality, citizenship, etc" z-lib
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Burner
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BTW, it appears that the eBay supplier that woelen used is selling Li through all the eBay boards. Here is the one for the US - http://www.ebay.com/itm/281364082120?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.... Based on woelen's positive experience I think that I will pick up some for my
lab.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding
its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your
knowledge.”
- Isaac Asimov
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gdflp
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Yeah, I've bought KI from that seller before. Shipping wasn't too bad considering it's coming from China and the price was excellent.
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Loptr
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Quote: Originally posted by gdflp  | | Yeah, I've bought KI from that seller before. Shipping wasn't too bad considering it's coming from China and the price was excellent.
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It's because of the ePacket. It's cheap, but can be slow. However, if that cuts the price significantly enough, then I am happy regardless.
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MrHomeScientist
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This is great work woelen, I'd love to see some photos of the process.
This lithium source looks amazing too. Normally I wouldn't buy from such a source (poorly described on eBay, comes from China, slow shipping) but if
you've had a good experience I might give it a try. This is a very opportune time, because I'll be needing good lithium for my next set of experiments
producing Nd metal!
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gdflp
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| Quote: Originally posted by Loptr |
It's because of the ePacket. It's cheap, but can be slow. However, if that cuts the price significantly enough, then I am happy regardless.
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Sorry, I wasn't very clear. All of their products have free shipping and the shipping time wasn't bad at 5-6 days. I've had ePackets take 4-5 weeks.
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nezza
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Does this experiment work with sodium ?.
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Kiwichemicali
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woelen
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I have taken down my windows XP machine and switched to new hardware with Ubuntu 14.04. I moved my entire website source from the XP machine to the
Ubuntu machine and now use Kompozer for editing web pages and Gimp for editing/scaling pictures. This works fine and I am quite happy with this. I,
however, also made movies of the reaction with the free solvated electrons and I cannot find a good tool for editing videos (I used VirtualDub on my
Windows XP machine). I installed Cinelerra, which is supposed to be a good video editing program, but I cannot make anything of this. Could someone
please give suggestions to help me further with this issue. Right now I cannot edit videos and this is blocking further development of my website 
Cinelerra is really overwhelming, I only need options for basic filtering (e.g. scaling down the resolution, rotating 90 degrees, 180 degrees or 270
degrees, taking certain intervals from the video, occasionally changing brightness and/or contrast, cropping, that kind of things). Cinelerra requires
me to create a project for each video with a zillion options to be configured, but this sounds to me like a lot of complicated overhead. Do I really
need to do that kind of complicated things for each simple video?
The system I am running is Kubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, which has a KDE desktop. The machine has an Intel Core i3, with HD4000 graphics, and 8 GByte RAM.
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MrHomeScientist
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Woelen, it sounds like you are looking for the same thing I wanted for my videos. I use AVS Video Editor: http://www.avs4you.com/AVS-Video-Editor.aspx
It's very basic and can be buggy sometimes (save often!), but it definitely does not have a lot of overhead at all. All I need is the ability to
splice clips together, edit audio, display text, and make transitions, and this software works great for simple stuff like that. I have no idea what
sort of system requirements it has, but you should definitely take a look. I'm pretty satisfied with it.
As an added bonus, with AVS you pay one time for a lifetime license and this gives you access to their whole suite of software, listed on the left of
the page. Video, audio, and photo editing and even a DVD creator and some other goodies. All in all I think it's a very good deal.
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woelen
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Thanks for the suggestion, but this is not something I can use. There is no MAC/Linux support in this software. The software I use must run under
Linux (Kubuntu). I found openshot. It is somewhat more intuitive than cinelerra, but it also has quite some limitations. E.g. cropping videos is a
pain in the ass. On the other hand, editing in the time domain (e.g. splitting clips, creating cuts, keeping a single frame displayed for a somewhat
longer time) is very easy. Rendering formats unfortunately are limited. I only can choose from some predefined resolutions (e.g. 720p, 1080p, DVD, VGA
and some PAL compliant resolutions). With VirtualDub I could select any resolution, e.g. 720x1280 instead of 1280x720 for videos which are rotated 90
degrees. Still not really happy with this.
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Brain&Force
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I know sodium dissolved in ammonia will produce solvated electrons, but I don't know about ethylenediamine. Why not try it yourself?
I'm curious about how the lanthanides will react with ethylenediamine now, after seeing ytterbium dissolving in liquid ammonia.
[edit] woelen, do you have any images or videos I can add to the Sciencemadness Wiki's article on solvated electrons?
[Edited on 18.8.2014 by Brain&Force]
At the end of the day, simulating atoms doesn't beat working with the real things...
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woelen
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@Brain&Force: I will donate the pictures and videos of the solvated electrons, once I have resolved the software issues I have now with my
website. I made a few nice videos of the solvated electrons and how they react with air and water, but at the moment they are not yet suitable for web
publication (uncompressed 1080p videos, size well over half a GByte). I need to compress them, scale them down, do some cropping and do a little color
correction (the videos are somewhat yellow, because I made them at artificial light with a color temperature of 5500 K).
@nezza: I can imagine that the experiment works with sodium as well. However, the reaction with sodium may be too exothermic, causing the solvent to
boil away or causing the electrons to react with the NH2-group with formation of hydrogen and an -NH(-) ionic form (similar to amide, but with one
hydrogen substituded).
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Polverone
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| Quote: Originally posted by woelen | | Thanks for the suggestion, but this is not something I can use. There is no MAC/Linux support in this software. The software I use must run under
Linux (Kubuntu). I found openshot. It is somewhat more intuitive than cinelerra, but it also has quite some limitations. E.g. cropping videos is a
pain in the ass. On the other hand, editing in the time domain (e.g. splitting clips, creating cuts, keeping a single frame displayed for a somewhat
longer time) is very easy. Rendering formats unfortunately are limited. I only can choose from some predefined resolutions (e.g. 720p, 1080p, DVD, VGA
and some PAL compliant resolutions). With VirtualDub I could select any resolution, e.g. 720x1280 instead of 1280x720 for videos which are rotated 90
degrees. Still not really happy with this. |
The easiest solution may be to install virtualized Windows XP under VirtualBox, since you already know a program that does what you need in XP.
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
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unionised
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"I made solvated electrons without need of liquid ammonia"
"The easiest solution may be to install virtualized Windows XP under VirtualBox"
Odd, I thought the easiest solution was to use ethylene diamine.
However I wondered if the isopropylamine from glyphosate based products might work too.
[Edited on 18-8-14 by unionised]
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woelen
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I tried the experiment with sodium. I cut a small piece of sodium from a larger lump, removed adhering oil with a tissue and dumped the piece of
sodium in a test tube, containing 2 ml of ethylene diamine. Immediately, a very slow reaction starts, in which hydrogen is formed. The reaction is
very very slow, giving tiny bubbles of hydrogen which make the ethylene diamine appear cloudy and only slowly move upwards.
I let this stand for 10 minutes or so. After 10 minutes nothing was changed. Still the very slow reaction at the surface of the piece of sodium in the
ethylene diamine. The sodium sometimes goes to the bottom, sometimes it rises, due to adhering bubbles of hydrogen.
After another 10 minutes I added a tiny drop of water and swirled the test tube. When this is done, then the reaction becomes a little faster. Most
remarkable is that the surface of the sodium turns blue, but the liquid remains colorless. Even after several minutes, the piece of sodium remains
blue, but no color can be detected in the liquid. Slowly, when the water disappears, the reactions becomes slower and slower again, and the blue color
becomes less intense.
I added another drop of water, this time a big drop from a faucet. Now, a much faster reaction occurs, the liquid turns warm (not hot) and the sodium
becomes shiny/white, no blue color can be observed.
So, it appears that transiently, at the surface of the sodium, some solvated electrons are formed, but only when there is a very small amount of water
present. In dry ethylene diamine, (hardly) no reaction occurs. The spectacular deep blue color, obtained with lithium, is not obtained with sodium.
[Edited on 19-8-14 by woelen]
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Zyklon-A
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Ah, that's a shame. I wanted to try that one. I guess I do have some lithium, so I could give it a shot.
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nezza
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The only liquid amine I have at the moment is aniline. I have tried adding a small amount of lithium to it and there appears to be no reaction. Next
stop sodium.
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woelen
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Even a small piece of lithium will do the job if your ethylene diamine is of good quality. If the ethylene diamine contains too much
water, then you run the risk of having all lithium reacted with the water before any blue solvated electrons can appear.
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