Meltonium
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Lithium as Sodium Replacement?
Hi all,
For a while, I've had my eye on purchasing some sodium metal off ebay. List price for the item in mind is $24 for 15 grams. I pretty good deal for an
alkali metal. However, I've also had my eye on some lithium metal. List price for that is ~$16 for 20 grams.
I know that usually sodium is used for drying solvents and making strong bases (like sodium methoxide) and what not, but I was wondering if lithium
could serve as a viable replacement. After all, for the price you get less than 1 mol Na for $24 and ~3 mol Li for cheaper. Lithium just seems like a
better "investment"
(They're both cheap, but I'm more interested in the similarity of their chemistry)
"If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again."
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RawWork
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I can't believe that. I know that lithium is supposed to be more expensive, because it's rarer than sodium on our planet and because it requires more
energy to reduce from compounds. In any case, bulk buying is recommended. That's too expensive! I would never buy it!
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Meltonium
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Here's the lithium post:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/20g-0-7-oz-High-Purity-99-9-Pure-Li...
And here's sodium:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sodium-metal-15g/123028934863?hash=...
I also found it hard to believe that lithium would be cheaper, but it is what it is i guess. (Unless of course this is crap lithium)
I also just ran some rough calculations on another listing for 2 pounds (~908g) of sodium metal. The buy now price is $250 which would mean that you
pay ~$6.25USD per mole of sodium. Still, though, the price per mole of lithium would be ~$5.50USD.
"If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again."
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DavidJR
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I bought sodium from this seller on eBay, great deal at £9 for 56g.
Seems to only show uk shipping but it'd be worth asking the seller if they'd ship to where you are.
[Edited on 5-4-2018 by DavidJR]
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clearly_not_atara
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Lithium is probably cheaper because it's easier to handle. At such small quantities, you probably pay more for packaging than for the material.vMake
sure to check if lithium is restricted in your area before attempting to purchase.
Lithium can replace sodium in many reactions, but not all. In particular, lithium alkoxides other than methoxide are inefficient bases.
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BromicAcid
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Quote: Originally posted by RawWork  | | I can't believe that. I know that lithium is supposed to be more expensive, because it's rarer than sodium on our planet and because it requires more
energy to reduce from compounds. In any case, bulk buying is recommended. That's too expensive! I would never buy it! |
Look at the molecular weight of lithium, that's enough lithium to do a lot of reactions and have a lot of fun. Sounds like a good deal to me, how
much do you need to experiment with anyway?
My take on it is that the lithium is cheaper because with lithium batteries it's becoming much more of a commodity item as the free metal.
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DavidJR
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| Quote: Originally posted by BromicAcid |
My take on it is that the lithium is cheaper because with lithium batteries it's becoming much more of a commodity item as the free metal.
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Sure, the use of lithium batteries has grown dramatically over the past decade, but most of these are Li-ion or Li-poly batteries which don't contain
elemental lithium metal - they only contain lithium salts.
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BromicAcid
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| Quote: Originally posted by DavidJR | | Sure, the use of lithium batteries has grown dramatically over the past decade, but most of these are Li-ion or Li-poly batteries which don't contain
elemental lithium metal - they only contain lithium salts. |
Lithium salts are popular in rechargeable
variants but there is still a large market for single-use lithium batteries which do use metallic lithium in their electrochemical cell.
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