Steveboy25
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Liquid Mercury
Hello new to the forum just wondering is ther a safe way to make Hg salt out off liquid Mercury yes I have seen the post by another member and used
search bar to find answers but ther must be a safer way to do it.
Thanks in advance
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Detonationology
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What kind of salt do you wish to make? A safer to handle Hg salt? Typically, soluble Hg compounds are MUCH more dangerous to handle than metallic,
liquid mercury.
“There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.” ― William James
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Steveboy25
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Safe as possible kind really it's for a aluminum amalgam
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chemrox
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I would buy HgCl2. Seems like a waste of valuable metal to salt it. However, Hg & HCl should give a result. Waffen is one of the guys that could
help with stoichiometry and conditions.
"When you let the dumbasses vote you end up with populism followed by autocracy and getting back is a bitch." Plato (sort of)
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Steveboy25
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I have 3kg off it couldn't buy it in a salt just liquid form cheers for the help
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Detonationology
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"Aluminum amalgam may be prepared by either grinding aluminum pellets or wire in mercury, or by allowing aluminum wire to react with a solution of
mercury(II) chloride in water." (Wikipedia) I don't have experience with any mercury compounds, but I wonder what what happen if you were to melt
some aluminum in a crucible with a fairly insoluble mercury (II) salt until it was mixed consistently throughout the aluminum. Perhaps, at elevated
temperatures the mercury salt would be more likely to attack the aluminum.
“There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.” ― William James
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Metacelsus
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For amalgam, just use the liquid Hg. It's less convenient, but safer than having to prepare a salt.
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careysub
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From my (online) investigation of the uses if mercury I gather that aluminum amalgam for reductions can be prepared using mercury(II) nitrate instead
of mercury(II) chloride.
While equally toxic it seems much safer to prepare and work with - it does not sublime like the notorious "corrosive sublimate", and is easily made
(at least, if you have some nitric acid).
Direct combination of mercury and aluminum sounds like a good idea (no soluble mercury compounds) but the actual procedure sounds difficult:
"The most direct way is to grind aluminum pellets or wire
in mercury. This is not a particularly easy method to
control or standardize, and ideally it should be performed
in an inert atmosphere to prevent the amalgamated aluminum
from reacting immediately. "
http://www.clays.org/journal/archive/volume%2019/19-5-337.pd...
Fine aluminum powders are available (down to just a few microns) which seem like they would amalgamate very readily. The inert atmosphere would make
things more difficult, but how about performing this under a liquid to exclude air contact, both mercury and aluminum being dense.
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byko3y
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Sulfates and nitrates love to decompose and hydrolyze
2Hg(NO3)2 --> 2HgO(s) + 4NO2(g) + O2(g)
that's why they don't sublime, so you need to add a small amount of acid to a solution of an old salt until all the HgO percipitate is dissolved
To prepare both chloride and nitrate you need to oxidize the mercury with nitric acid, because neither HCl nor dillute H2SO4 can oxidize the mercury.
So, the simplest way to obtain mercury salt is to make a nitrate in a hot 40% nitric acid.
Elemental mercury vapor is thought to be as toxic as organomercury compounds.
You can't make aluminium amalgam with elemental mercury - they just don't react easily because of aluminium oxide layer, which is not a problem for
pitting corrosion when using mercury (II) salt.
[Edited on 9-12-2015 by byko3y]
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hissingnoise
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Aluminium versus mercury!
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byko3y
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AFAIK it's 40 seconds of the video are 40 minutes of real time - you can clearly see why it's not suitable for amalgam preparation.
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careysub
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Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  | | AFAIK it's 40 seconds of the video are 40 minutes of real time - you can clearly see why it's not suitable for amalgam preparation.
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Thanks for your very informative comments.
And the video does show why aluminum airplanes and mercury do not mix.
Although ~2 hours (according to the text) elapses, and the amalgamation process was kickstarted by "scratching gallium into the surface", this does
make it seem like some procedure using a little gallium to get the process started might be viable. An hour or two for a preparative procedure to
complete is not unreasonable (if if works).
I see comments here about using gallinstan in amalgamations, but little or no experimental, so I can't tell if this really viable or not.
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Steveboy25
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Cheers for that fellas
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