lazaruz
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Copper and nickel acetate
I would like to run something by you to see if my logic makes sense 
I've experimented with making copper acetate and copper plating using vinegar and hydrogen peroxide and that went great. Then I read about making
nickel acetate which apparently needs electricity together with vinegar, vinegar by itself being too weak to dissolve the nickel.
Now to my questions 
Some of the Swedish coins are made up of a nickel core and an alloy of 25% copper and 75% nickel on the outside.
If i put those coins in a vinegar/hydrogen peroxide solution, will that just dissolve the copper, creating copper acetate, and leave the nickel
intact?
If I move the coins afterwards to just vinegar with some low current, will that produce nickel acetate?
If only the copper gets dissolved in the first step, how do I know that all copper is dissolved and it's only nickel left?
I did an experiment with this and the first solution gave me a nice blue color, so I assume the copper got dissolved into copper acetate. The second
solution gave me a more greenish color, so I assume that was mostly nickel.
I wrote about this experiment on my blog where you can see pictures too https://crystal-growing-experiments.blogspot.se/2016/09/separation-of-copper-and-nickel-from.html
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xfusion44
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I'm not sure about that but I think nickel would also react with acetic acid, since there is also hydrogen peroxide present in your solution. Hydrogen
peroxide oxidizes metal and you get a thin layer of metal oxide on its surface. That oxide can then react with weak acetic acid. As I said, I'm not
sure if that would also happen with nickel, but it probably would.
You said one solution was blue and the other was green, which could mean that the green one is less concentrated - try leaving the coins in there
longer - electrolysis usually works slower than just mixing acetic acid, h2o2 and adding a metal, unless you're using power source that's able to
deliver higher amounts of current.
Nice blog, btw
Best regards, xfusion
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zwt
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Cupro-nickel alloys are fairly difficult to separate in an home-lab setting; certainly, there's no solution known to dissolve only one of the
components.
A United States "nickel" ($0.05 coin) is in fact 25% nickel and 75% copper; here is a long thread about attempts to separate that alloy.
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crystal grower
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Hello Lazarus,
I'm not sure what coins you have used, but are you sure that it's legal in your country?
(Nothing against this experiment, I'm just curious about it).
And, by the way, you have some really nice crystals on your blogg .
[Edited on 3-9-2016 by crystal grower]
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lazaruz
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Quote: Originally posted by crystal grower  | Hello Lazarus,
I'm not sure what coins you have used, but are you sure that it's legal in your country?
(Nothing against this experiment, I'm just curious about it).
And, by the way, you have some really nice crystals on your blogg .
[Edited on 3-9-2016 by crystal grower] |
Actually, as of 1980, in Sweden, it is legal do do whatever with your money as long as you don't try to pass it of as something that it's not.
And yes, I kinda figured that I couldn't separate the metals in an easy way like that, always fun to experiment though.
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NEMO-Chemistry
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| Quote: Originally posted by lazaruz | | Quote: Originally posted by crystal grower | Hello Lazarus,
I'm not sure what coins you have used, but are you sure that it's legal in your country?
(Nothing against this experiment, I'm just curious about it).
And, by the way, you have some really nice crystals on your blogg .
[Edited on 3-9-2016 by crystal grower] |
Actually, as of 1980, in Sweden, it is legal do do whatever with your money as long as you don't try to pass it of as something that it's not.
And yes, I kinda figured that I couldn't separate the metals in an easy way like that, always fun to experiment though. |
This is also the same in the UK, you can do anything you like with your money.....As long as its giving it to the government in some form of tax  .
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