Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Ruthenium(III) chloride - RuCl3

nimgoldman - 4-6-2019 at 15:10

I am looking for this ruthenium salt for a small project on oxidative cleavage. The nature of the compounds used require this exact reagent to avoid over-oxidation.

The metal is easily available even in powder/sponge form, but unfortunately, making chloride salt from it seems to be difficult for an amateur (direct chlorination, high temperatures, carbon oxide...).

I found there is Ru(II) and Ru(IV) oxides available on Alibaba. Maybe the oxides could be converted?

My last resort is to ask a Latvian chemical provider who can order reagents for me, but it is usually very expensive. I am from EU.

CobaltChloride - 4-6-2019 at 21:15

If you are from the EU, you should also consider buying RuCl3*xH2O from onyxmet: http://onyxmet.com/?route=product/product&path=69_109&am...

nimgoldman - 5-6-2019 at 01:22

Hydrated salt is perfectly OK for my purpose.

Yes I am from central Europe, this company is just around the corner (Poland), thanks!

[Edited on 5-6-2019 by nimgoldman]

Chemcraft - 6-6-2019 at 00:16

We also sell RuCl3.
Price 5 EUR/g + shipping
Please mail me an sales[@]chemcraft[.]ru

DavidJR - 6-6-2019 at 11:17

I've recently acquired some ruthenium hydroxide which I am hoping will dissolve easily in HCl(aq)...

edit: it doesn't......

[Edited on 7-6-2019 by DavidJR]

woelen - 8-6-2019 at 12:53

Use bleach to dissolve the so-called Ru-hydroxide. It most likely is RuO2.xH2O. This stuff is quite inert, but you can dissolve it in bleach as olive green RuO4(-), which on standing forms red RuO4(2-).

DavidJR - 8-6-2019 at 17:49

Yeah, on reading I discovered that "ruthenium (III) hydroxide" is a complete misnomer. It is indeed quite inert.

I put 50mg of the "ruthenium hydroxide" in a test tube and added a couple of millilitres of conc HCl. Nothing seemed to happen which was disappointing - I was hoping it would dissolve right away. However, I came back to the test tube the next day and there was a slight colouration of the supernatant liquid, though the solid left didn't look much less than what I started with. So it does dissolve in concentrated HCl, albeit VERY slowly at room temp.

So, since it reacts slowly the logical next thing to try was heating it up. I weighed 500mg of the "hydroxide" and covered it with conc. HCl and boiled it for a few hours, topping up with more HCl(aq) as necessary. I managed to dissolve most of the 500mg.


Fleaker - 11-6-2019 at 05:12

It all depends how fresh the ruthenium hydroxide is. Freshly precipitated will dissolve even in weakly acidic solutions.