Quote: Originally posted by UnintentionalChaos | Quote: Originally posted by JohnWW | If you had a sufficiently large amount of Pb, and zone-refining heating equipment, you may be able to do it by zone refining, in which a narrow zone
of Pb is kept molten in a long steel (or other impervious material) cylinder by heating coils, and slowly moving the heating coils along its length,
so that highly pure Pb crystallizes behind the molten zone, and the impurities are swept along in the molten zone.
[Edited on 2-11-09 by JohnWW] |
That has got to be the most useless recommendation I've ever heard. Seriously? |
You could purify it one atom at a time. Use an electron beam to sputter atoms off a lead surface and ionise them. Then accelerate them in an
electric field and use a magnetic field to deflect them according to their isotopic mass. Collect the different isotopic masses in various target
bins.
You could probably modify an old mass spectrometer to do the job.
Run the machine for, well, rather a long time, and you eventually have isotopically pure lead that you can use for lead-lights, solder, or whatever.
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