budullewraagh
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Strontium from Nitrate?
im trying to obtain strontium metal from the nitrate salt. i was thinking of making a solution of the salt and adding pure magnesium metal to reduce
the strontium.
two questions:
-would this work?
-would the strontium dissolve?
if it doesnt work, do you have any other ideas?
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The_Davster
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Won't work. Even if Sr did form, which it would not because of reduction potentials, the Sr would react with the water forming strontium
hydroxide.
I'm afraid the only way to 'fun' metals like this is molten electrolysis.
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BromicAcid
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Reaction of strontium nitrate with a calculated amount of magnesium metal could yield at least some strontium metal (Solid state reaction). It would
have to be exactly stoichiometric though, and sealed off from the entry of oxygen, i.e., a one-way ball valve. Although of course some reactions
could be highly energetic. The author of Principles of Pyrotechnics states in said book that even sodium metal can be formed by the reaction of a
calculated amount of sodium nitrate with magnesium turnings.
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JohnWW
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That would be likely to happen appreciably only if the (more volatile but heavier) Sr were to be removed from the reaction vessel as it is formed.
Water would have to be absent.
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BromicAcid
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Indeed, when this reaction is run with strontium oxide or carbonate and the reducing metal is aluminum, a high vacuum and direct distillation of the
product is required to achieve yields that are significant (Preparative Inorganic chemistry states yields of >80% as I recall) the comparative
reaction with magnesium would also be complicated by the magnesium forming the nitride at these elevated temperatures with the nitrogen thus evolved.
And of course as you mentioned John WW, the nitrate must be anhydrous for any reasonable purity to be achieved.
However a stoichiometric mixture like this would probably be dangerous to run in a sealed reaction vessel, I would recommend MgO be added to bring the
reaction more under control, comparable to reductions of lithium hydroxide with magnesium metal. Otherwise without the vacuum and moderate, this
reaction could be quite fast, yield only little product difficult to separate from the remaining reaction mass, but, maybe you could make organic
barium compounds with it for fun, they should burn beautifully.
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