On trying to make Nickel sulfate with
pure nickel strips (used to connect lithium battery)
with drain cleaner sulfuric acid.
Heated to a temp of 65°C
The reaction took about a week to end
BUT
it resulted in formation of colorless crystals.
Did not add excess acid( acid was added in small additions )
To my knowledge it should form blue/green color solution right. But the crystals seem colorless or some brown color to it( but definetly not green).
I will attach some pics
(crystal structure do look like nickel salt though)
Can anyone give me the reason??
I would really appreciate it
Could it be like cuso4 where the anhydrous salt is whitish but the hydrate is strongly colored?B(a)P - 25-3-2020 at 21:06
Are you sure it is pure nickel? They often just coat iron with nickel for those strips, so you might have mostly iron sulfate with a bit of nickel
sulfate. rockyit98 - 25-3-2020 at 23:21
use Mu metal from a old HDD magnet bracket .they are mostly Ni (70 to 80%) adding little HCl will speed up the reaction kind of like a catalyst.
i made pure Al2(SO4)3 from Al and H2SO4 but with out HCl it was so slow. you can remove the HCl with light heating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu-metal http://www.sciencemadness.org/smwiki/index.php/Mu-metalB(a)P - 26-3-2020 at 00:23
Nichrome wire is a good source of nickel. React it with HCl, dry it, then separate the nickel from the chromium by dissolving the nickel chloride in
ethanol. draculic acid69 - 26-3-2020 at 01:59
Nichrome wire is a good source of nickel. React it with HCl, dry it, then separate the nickel from the chromium by dissolving the nickel chloride in
ethanol.
What form does this leave the chrome in? Is it still the free metal?
[Edited on 26-3-2020 by draculic acid69]B(a)P - 26-3-2020 at 02:39
It forms the chloride salt which is insoluble ethanol unlike nickel chloride.CarlSagans_RayGuns - 26-3-2020 at 08:56
Those pictures do not look like nickel sulfate. I have better luck dissolving nickel in warm HCl and making nickel chloride first. The nickel chloride
helps dissolve the nickel metal a lot faster. Then make nickel sulfate out of it. Those strips might not be pure nickel. The nickel oxide in NiMh
batteries is a better source. I have also used nickel welding rods before.clearly_not_atara - 26-3-2020 at 13:22
Wiki says the anhydrous salt is "yellow", but this may be a faint color in pure crystals that only becomes noticeable in powdered samples. Does it
turn blue when put in water?Bedlasky - 26-3-2020 at 17:45
If you used only drain cleaner without dilution, I think that nickel was passivated. Conc. sulfuric acid passivates many metals.
As others said above, try dissolve it in HCl. HCl is better in dissolving metals than sulfuric acid, because of formation metal-chloride complexes.RogueRose - 27-3-2020 at 01:22
I'm guessing those nickel strips are nickel coated steel. I've never found them to be solid nickel and they would be very expensive if they were. Use
a magnet to test them, I know nickel is magnetic, but not like steel is I don't think.
I've never seen clear crystals like this from any metal. The only thing I can think of is some MgSO4 maybe.
Have you tried heating the crystals to a very hot temp and seeing what it decomposes to? I would think it would change color as it gets hotter.
