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Cou
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Quote: Originally posted by No Tears Only Dreams Now  | | Quote: Originally posted by Cou | Well, even the soil in your backyard is made of various elements... perhaps you could smelt iron by heating it to about 1250 C in a furnace, but i
don't know what soil is really made of
[Edited on 13-10-2014 by Cou] |
It differs ENORMOUSLY depending on location, but typically a whole lot of silicates containing group 1 or 2 elements, iron, magnesium, or aluminum,
along with all sorts of oxides. That and organic matter in the form of both living and dead organisms. |
I live in an area of texas with very dark clay soil, and clay soil is mostly iron oxide I think. Should try making a tiny arc furnace to smelt it
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hyfalcon
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When you heat clay you get porcelain.
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Amos
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That is an incredibly generalized statement. Porcelain is a kind of fired ceramic that is usually made of kaolin, and only certain minerals can
constitute ceramic that can be called porcelain. There are often various additives involed, such as ash, silicon dioxide, or various fluxes to lower
the fusion temperature that while not necessarily composing a huge amount of the clay(though sometimes they compose the majority), they are often
vital to the function. Heating up some clay containing dirt, even to firing temperatures, usually won't even initiate fusion, much less make
porcelain.
Also I should mention that "clay" often just refers to extremely fine soil particles. And most of the minerals that form clay are aluminum silicates;
minerals are rarely as simple as binary oxides.
[Edited on 10-13-2014 by No Tears Only Dreams Now]
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hyfalcon
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Sorry, my attempt at being dryly glib.
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Amos
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Yeah, with what you were responding to it really didn't matter; he'll figure out that the world is a complex place on his own.
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careysub
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When you heat clay you get brick.
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Amos
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This is closer. You kind of have to wet it and shape it first. And heat it very slowly and evenly. Not to mention the incredible temperatures you have
to reach.
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Hawkguy
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| Quote: Originally posted by Cou | | Sometimes I look at all these crystals on the internet like galena (lead sulfide) and I go "How do I mine for those myself?" Could I just claim any
land for mining and find something, or do you have to go to a special area? I'd like to find compounds myself, instead of buying them.
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I know that this is less related than what other people are mentioning, but I would highly recommend this if you are just generally interested in the
idea of extracting stuff from the ground.
Go into the mountains and find some nice Iron - bearing rocks. Its not hard to tell which ones they are, as they are often rusty, and you'll get an
inkling whether or not there's any metal content. Carry them off the mountain (If you are not in a park of course, as then it would be unlawful ).
Break them down with a hammer into pea sized rocks, and bake them in some sort of furnace (I just use a charcoal burning brick furnace in the yard).
The idea is to reduce the oxides and melt the tiny pieces of iron so they coalesce. Once it cools, you can collect your product and pat yourself on
the back or whatever. If you do it in an amateur way like me, you'll get WAY less Iron than you expected, but its still fun.
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Texium
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Well, if you live in the Minecraft world it doesn't matter how you heat it. Lumps of clay will
magically become perfectly even bricks even if you just burn a couple sticks under them. Ah, if only the world were that simple! 
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Brain&Force
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Some places, especially in California, will have mines open to the public (though you may have to pay for admission). There's a big tourmaline mine
here. You'd probably be better off just finding rocks in random places and seeing what you can get out of them, as it's cheaper and more fun.
My friend appears to have found a rock that contains antimony, which was an interesting find.
At the end of the day, simulating atoms doesn't beat working with the real things...
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hyfalcon
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Must be SoCal. There's a couple of big tourmaline mines just north of San Diego that I want to do some dirt grubbing in.
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Amos
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Watermelon Tourmaline is one of my absolute favorites...
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diddi
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I posted here yesterday but all my posts have disappeared. so short version is this: join a gemstone club. they know all. I am a member in my area.
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Cou
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| Quote: Originally posted by Hawkguy | | Quote: Originally posted by Cou | | Sometimes I look at all these crystals on the internet like galena (lead sulfide) and I go "How do I mine for those myself?" Could I just claim any
land for mining and find something, or do you have to go to a special area? I'd like to find compounds myself, instead of buying them.
|
I know that this is less related than what other people are mentioning, but I would highly recommend this if you are just generally interested in the
idea of extracting stuff from the ground.
Go into the mountains and find some nice Iron - bearing rocks. Its not hard to tell which ones they are, as they are often rusty, and you'll get an
inkling whether or not there's any metal content. Carry them off the mountain (If you are not in a park of course, as then it would be unlawful ).
Break them down with a hammer into pea sized rocks, and bake them in some sort of furnace (I just use a charcoal burning brick furnace in the yard).
The idea is to reduce the oxides and melt the tiny pieces of iron so they coalesce. Once it cools, you can collect your product and pat yourself on
the back or whatever. If you do it in an amateur way like me, you'll get WAY less Iron than you expected, but its still fun. |
Or make thermite out of it, so the iron melts and falls out
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Hawkguy
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| Quote: Originally posted by Cou | | Quote: Originally posted by Hawkguy | | Quote: Originally posted by Cou | | Sometimes I look at all these crystals on the internet like galena (lead sulfide) and I go "How do I mine for those myself?" Could I just claim any
land for mining and find something, or do you have to go to a special area? I'd like to find compounds myself, instead of buying them.
|
I know that this is less related than what other people are mentioning, but I would highly recommend this if you are just generally interested in the
idea of extracting stuff from the ground.
Go into the mountains and find some nice Iron - bearing rocks. Its not hard to tell which ones they are, as they are often rusty, and you'll get an
inkling whether or not there's any metal content. Carry them off the mountain (If you are not in a park of course, as then it would be unlawful ).
Break them down with a hammer into pea sized rocks, and bake them in some sort of furnace (I just use a charcoal burning brick furnace in the yard).
The idea is to reduce the oxides and melt the tiny pieces of iron so they coalesce. Once it cools, you can collect your product and pat yourself on
the back or whatever. If you do it in an amateur way like me, you'll get WAY less Iron than you expected, but its still fun. |
Or make thermite out of it, so the iron melts and falls out |
Thermite would become kinda sketch because of all the other stuff in the ore.. I dont know about anywhere else, but in my area there isn't any
straight pure Iron/ Oxide dug up... I see you're logic though..
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j_sum1
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| Quote: Originally posted by Cou | | I live in an area of texas with very dark clay soil, and clay soil is mostly iron oxide I think. Should try making a tiny arc furnace to smelt it
|
| Quote: Originally posted by Hawkguy | | Quote: Originally posted by Cou | | Quote: Originally posted by Hawkguy | | Quote: Originally posted by Cou | | Sometimes I look at all these crystals on the internet like galena (lead sulfide) and I go "How do I mine for those myself?" Could I just claim any
land for mining and find something, or do you have to go to a special area? I'd like to find compounds myself, instead of buying them.
|
I know that this is less related than what other people are mentioning, but I would highly recommend this if you are just generally interested in the
idea of extracting stuff from the ground.
Go into the mountains and find some nice Iron - bearing rocks. Its not hard to tell which ones they are, as they are often rusty, and you'll get an
inkling whether or not there's any metal content. Carry them off the mountain (If you are not in a park of course, as then it would be unlawful ).
Break them down with a hammer into pea sized rocks, and bake them in some sort of furnace (I just use a charcoal burning brick furnace in the yard).
The idea is to reduce the oxides and melt the tiny pieces of iron so they coalesce. Once it cools, you can collect your product and pat yourself on
the back or whatever. If you do it in an amateur way like me, you'll get WAY less Iron than you expected, but its still fun. |
Or make thermite out of it, so the iron melts and falls out |
Thermite would become kinda sketch because of all the other stuff in the ore.. I dont know about anywhere else, but in my area there isn't any
straight pure Iron/ Oxide dug up... I see you're logic though.. |
Anecdotal evidence.
The region where I live has a predominance of rust-red finely powdered clay-ish kind of soil. A lot of Australia has it. It is officially designated
ferrosol and unsurprisingly has a very high iron content. If you drop a bar magnet on the ground it will come up with soil particles clinging to it.
Based on this a student of mine attempted a project to extract the iron using thermite reactions. Although the iron content is high, there is enough
other stuff in there to make it extremely difficult to get a high temperature and self-sustaining reaction. He tried both Al and Mg thermites. He
tried adding S and excess Al as a helper reaction. He tried varying the quantity and geometry of the reaction pile. All without much success. A good
idea is sometimes not easy to pull off.
His best attempt was to encase a soil/Al mix in the middle of a nice energetic CuO/Al thermite to get the temperature up. He got a nice little silvery
nugget out of that one. It probably contained a fair bit of Al -- he never found the exact composition of the soil and the Al was in excess. It likely
was also alloyed with copper and whatever else was in the soil. It was not magnetic and so my guess is an austenitic alloy of some kind. It would have
been good to have done a proper analysis of his nugget but a school project can only go for so long.
What I like is that you can learn a bunch of stuff and have a lot of fun even if you don't achieve success. And there is some merit in playing with
the toys that you have locally.
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DraconicAcid
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I wonder if hydrochloric acid would effectively extract iron oxides from soil samples.
Please remember: "Filtrate" is not a verb.
Write up your lab reports the way your instructor wants them, not the way your ex-instructor wants them.
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j_sum1
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Could do but we didn't try it. My instinct would be to go for nitric for that added solubility of products. But in the context of what we were doing
that would be a step in determining the iron concentration in the soil.
I am curious now. I wonder what else is in there. Undoubtedly Al and Si, but maybe some other transition metals. I might suggest it as a student
project next year.
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aga
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Grind up, heat strongly for a while to convert all the organics to carbon first.
Then splash about with acids to see what's in it.
(weigh before and after heating to see how much organics were in it).
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