Sciencemadness Discussion Board

I found some mercury

bquirky - 6-11-2010 at 11:30

Hi gents, Whilst snooping around i stumbled across this auction seller selling mercury for $USD 91 /Kg with free shipping

(or 89.71$AUD/Kg woo above parity.. take that :)

Anyway im not sure what a 'normal' price for mercury is so i cant say if its relly a good deal or not but alot of people hear mess about with it so i figured id pass it on..

http://www.dhgate.com/pure-mercury-the-purity-of-hg-is-not-l...


FYI

Dhgate.com is a chinese Ebay. for what its worth ive used it several times and have had good experiances ,they do paypal and all the normal stuff so it seems ligit.

Regards.
Bquirky

not_important - 6-11-2010 at 12:19

see
http://www.minormetals.com/

looks like 1200 to 1400 a 76 lb flask, in moderately high volume; likely double for small orders. I lucked out when I got my flask, about US$ 200.

bquirky - 6-11-2010 at 12:31

Cool Site

but i have to ask.. you have 76 pounds (over 30Kg) of mercury in your house ?

im fairly relaxed about chemicals but that seems excessive if you spilt that youd NEVER be able to clean it up.

not_important - 6-11-2010 at 13:04

Actually about 2/3 a flask, plus about 250 ml in a poly bottle inside another container. The flask isn't going to spill, the 'stopper' is a large threaded bolt that takes a bit of effort to turn; the flask is EU rated for rail transport and is really tough. Plus I always work with mercury inside a poly tub with fairly high walls and a layer of open poly mesh on the bottom to reduce splashing. Haven't had a true spill since I was 10 or 11.

It was a good price, at a time that mercury was getting increasingly difficult to obtain. It's a reserve, I've handed a couple hundred ml off to a couple of physics-type folk who needed a bit; perhaps my offsprung will inherit the remaining lot.


Mr. Wizard - 6-11-2010 at 14:39

For all of you storing a bottle or so of Mercury, be sure to double box it. Whatever 'secure' container you have it in, put that container in another container that has 1 or 2 cm of Sulphur laying in the bottom. You will see after a few months a dark stain on the Sulphur.

not_important - 6-11-2010 at 15:09

Well, I triple bottled my small bottle - PE inner holding the mercury (do gallium the same, either case freezing doesn't break the container), inside a glass jar with sulphur layer on the bottom, then in a heavy PE jar in case the glass one gets broken (I've lived in somewhat earthquake prone regions). The sulphur has never shown discolouration,, nor did the piece of zinc I left taped to the lid of the inner PE bottle show any mercury above background when a friend did an AA run on it. But smaller sample in a similar setup did show darkening of the sulphur after a year or so, the bottle top just wasn't as think and had a shorter threaded distance.

food - 6-11-2010 at 18:19

I inherited several very heavy metal 'bottles' of this from an employer a couple of years ago. It was originally from a mining operation I think. He'd been unable to find a way to get rid of it. I did find a scrap metal guy some distance away to buy it. There was at least 200 lbs. At the time I wasn't seeing it as a potentially interesting chemical; wasn't so much of a chemical hobbyist. Now I'm contemplating scrounging surplus mercury kill switches from a pack rat friend who works on outboards. Mercury outboards, funnily enough.

I wish that I'd hung on to some of that; at the time I felt that I'd lucked out being able to sell it to the scrap people. doh!

No storage precautions there. It had been sitting in a corner of the shop.

Justin - 6-11-2010 at 19:13

Yeah thats a pretty good price, i've got 250g here that i paid 30 USD for.

Jor - 6-11-2010 at 19:55

I don't understand why you people need so much mercury... Wouldn't this be a pain to dispose of when you don't need it anymore?

If you experiment with the element, you don't need more than say 25-50g right? This is by far enough for many Al/Hg reductions, synthesis of inorganic/coordination compounds of mercury. The only real application for such large amounts i see is use in physics (electronics).
I have a few switches containing the metal, I have bout 40-50g of the metal, 15-20g of HgO and 30mL 10% Hg(NO3)2 solution, wich is more than I ever need for experiments.

ldanielrosa - 7-11-2010 at 01:48

I have a bit less than 300g from ancient mercury switches that I traded a knife for. I don't know if it's been contaminated by the electrodes, but the bottle I put it in probably didn't do any favors. Would forcing it through activated charcoal clean it up a bit?

not_important - 7-11-2010 at 10:25

Quote: Originally posted by Jor  
I don't understand why you people need so much mercury... Wouldn't this be a pain to dispose of when you don't need it anymore?


I have several old apparatii that use mercury, such as the gas analysis one. Use as in need a liter or more.

Dispose of? It's in my will, someone else can play around with it too.
Quote:
I have a bit less than 300g from ancient mercury switches that I traded a knife for. I don't know if it's been contaminated by the electrodes, but the bottle I put it in probably didn't do any favors. Would forcing it through activated charcoal clean it up a bit?


Contamination in mercury is usually from oxides, which make it 'dirty' with a grey film that sticks to glass, and from metals dissolved in the mercury. Charcoal will not do anything for the second, may remove some of the oxide mechanically but simply allowing the mercury to flow through a pinhole in filter paper will do the same.


Cleaning mercury has been discussed a number of times here on SM, try the search engine or Google with site restriction and see if you can't find the old talk.