# dropping copper from solution



## kjavanb123 (Dec 7, 2010)

All,

I have finally produced a blue solution from leaching the copper ores with diluted acid. I use iron scraps to collect the copper, however it takes a long time to completely drop the copper using this methods. Since I am on small-scale yet, can I use zinc powder to drop the copper quickly? after adding soda ash to the solution to make it pH higher?

Thanks
Kev


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## Barren Realms 007 (Dec 7, 2010)

If you raise you PH with soda ash, when the solution turns clear let it set and everything should settle to the bottom of your container.


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 8, 2010)

Thanks man, any range of pH? Obviously the solution itself must have a pH in ranges of 2-3, since it is leached with acid. So I add soda ash till the solution turns clear in color?


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## HAuCl4 (Dec 8, 2010)

Can effective separations of metals in wastes be achieved with strict pH control?.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Dec 8, 2010)

kjavanb123 said:


> Thanks man, any range of pH? Obviously the solution itself must have a pH in ranges of 2-3, since it is leached with acid. So I add soda ash till the solution turns clear in color?



I do not know what the PH is when it turns clear. But yes soda ash is what I use.


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## butcher (Dec 11, 2010)

I have tried selective metal precipitation by using Ph, from my veiw it is almost impossible, but they say it can be done? problem is metal salts seem to over lap when and what Ph they will crystalize out of solution, many factors also come into play like temperature and concentration and types of metals in solution, getting Ph in just the right spot is also very difficult.
it is easy raising Ph to around 9 works good for precipitating most metals out all at once.

For me it is much easier using the solubility tables, and using which metal will dissolve or replace the other to get the metals seperated.


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 11, 2010)

I added soda ash to the copper sulfate solution i produced by dropping a copper piece into nitric acid but the color has changed very slightly, there are some salt at the bottom of beaker but no signs of copper, solution still is blue. 

In recovering part, is there anything that works faster than iron scrap to drop copper sulfate from the solution?

Thanks
Kev


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## lazersteve (Dec 11, 2010)

kjavanb123 said:


> In recovering part, is there anything that works faster than iron scrap to drop copper sulfate from the solution?



Electricity will remove copper quickly from copper sulfate solutions as long as they are not too diluted.

Steve


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## 4metals (Dec 12, 2010)

Agitate (aerate) the solution to move it around and the iron method will work faster, also add a small amount of sodium thiosulfate to the solution and the copper will not cling to the iron as much.


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## adam_mizer (Jan 22, 2011)

Dealing with the wastes, is it better to store and save them while you let them build up.

I mean if someone is planning to do this for a while the waste pile will grow in weight.

Can these mineral chlorides (edit: hydroxides) be safely stored indefinately in plastic containers like that of a milk jug?
I have only been dealing with mostly copper/nickel/gold plate items.
Thinking the copper is green and the nickel is blue.

Here I have seperated the blue and green and also have one container accumulating both.
Trying to decide whether seperating them or storing them together as both is a wise decision.
Trying to get some feedback from you guys.

Ph seems to be for both 7-8 is good then 9 allows the blue/nickel back to liquid, remove green copper, then lower ph (7-8) to drop nickel.
If both were removed and stored they could be dealt with after many gallons of material have accumulated.


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## 4metals (Jan 22, 2011)

Adam,

At the pH you are at, the chlorides are long gone and you are looking at metal hydroxides. The clear water on top is probably very salty if you raised the pH with sodium hydroxide. 

In a commercial treatment the pH is raised to 9.5 with either caustic or mag ox and the hydroxides are separated with a filter press. Depending on what else was in solution the solution remaining can be lowered to a pH of 7 and discharged. Commercial testing to local discharge parameters is required.


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## adam_mizer (Jan 22, 2011)

4metals said:


> Adam,
> 
> At the pH you are at, the chlorides are long gone and you are looking at metal hydroxides. The clear water on top is probably very salty if you raised the pH with sodium hydroxide.
> 
> In a commercial treatment the pH is raised to 9.5 with either caustic or mag ox and the hydroxides are separated with a filter press. Depending on what else was in solution the solution remaining can be lowered to a pH of 7 and discharged. Commercial testing to local discharge parameters is required.



Okay what do you know, I'm learning. So I'm looking at metal hydroxides now.
Thanks for that information.
An education is what I'm lacking while I learn from gaining experience its a slow process but a very interesting one.

Wanted to add, while I was trying to make seperation of metal hydroxide colors, noticed a small amount of orange-brown on the bottom as well as some small chunky black. 
I'm more interested right now in the orange-brown wondering what this little bit would be.
I saved the odd mixture in a seperate container for a later time.
Guess I just don't want to toss anything as I know there will be a build up in weight for each metal.


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## adam_mizer (Feb 13, 2011)

Here's something interesting to me.

My fresh mix seperation was basically blue and green in the buckets in the picture above posted Jan 22nd freshly seperated.
Took a look at it today as I processed some more waste.
The green turned rich deep gray. :shock: Guessing (again) think its the nickel.
The blue turned green. What gives! :shock: Think this is my copper.

Wow a complete reversal and color change after sitting.???


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## loitz2313 (Jul 19, 2011)

What about aluminum? If I drop copper with aluminum from copper chloride is there a contamination of aluminum in my copper precipitate or is it mostly in solution and copper on the bottom?


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## rasanders22 (Jul 19, 2011)

are you tryign to get pure Cu out of this? Wouldnt dropping the Cu with iron leave you with Cu(II)Cl? 

Would using electricty to drop the copper leave you with pure Cu?


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## Lambskin (Jul 19, 2011)

loitz2313 said:


> What about aluminum? If I drop copper with aluminum from copper chloride is there a contamination of aluminum in my copper precipitate or is it mostly in solution and copper on the bottom?


There would be a small amount of contamination from the aluminum. But aluminum will drop copper pretty fast. I use aluminum to drop copper out of copper chloride solution. Don't use aluminum foil it will cause alot of contamination. Someone correct me if I am wrong but I believe this to be true.


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## Lambskin (Jul 19, 2011)

Also make sure you are in a well ventilated area the aluminum will produce hydrogen gas. A small spark can really make a loud bang.
(edited for a spelling error.)


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## loitz2313 (Jul 19, 2011)

Thanx man I just wanted to make sure. I have been avoiding my wastes and now it's time to start working on them. but today I did a small test and "oops" I used foil but it was only a small test hence my post thanx you've helped alot.


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## NoIdea (Jul 20, 2011)

Hi just a quick thought, when my electrowinning cell is exhuasted, i recycle the PMG side for further use after filtering. The copper side contains copper crumbs, impurities, and copper sulphate. I make my own soda ash by hot wash and filter of our wood burner ash. This is more than enough to ppt any copper and anything else as either the carbonate or oxide. The ppt is very gluggy, though will filter over night. I use a inverted plastic bottle (bigger for big lots) with it's bottom cut off, i drill a 8mm hole in the lid, oh, it's easyer to do this with the lid still on :lol: . Jamming cotton wool into the inside of the lid, um lid is on, then poor in enough sand to cover the cotton wool by about an inch. Now for the clincher, jamb in a nylon stocking on top of the sand. This dramatically enhances the filtering of difficult ppt's. Pour in the copper glug and it will filter to a mud. If washng is your thing, then after the first filtration is complete pour in, just boiled, hot water. I dry the mud, and melt to produce high copper alloy, sold as brass.

I can take pick of both the filter and mud and dried product if anyone is interested, sorry no pics of the brass, that's coming.

Cheers


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## pesco (Jul 21, 2011)

kjavanb123 said:


> All,
> 
> I have finally produced a blue solution from leaching the copper ores with diluted acid. I use iron scraps to collect the copper, however it takes a long time to completely drop the copper using this methods. Since I am on small-scale yet, can I use zinc powder to drop the copper quickly? after adding soda ash to the solution to make it pH higher?
> 
> ...




If you want to cement Cu with iron scraps the best way is to take Cu sheet, using copper wire connect it with iron scrap and submerge the connected bits in the liquid you want to drop copper from. Make sure the wire link between both pieces of metal is above the liquid level. If surface area of copper sheet is bigger (the bigger difference the better) than surface area of iron scrap then most of the Cu will cement on top of the copper sheet as a layer of solid metal. By playing around with surface areas and temperature (pH doesn't play significant role in my experience as long as the solution is acidic) you could get all Cu out as a plated deposit and you could eliminate the need of filtration.


What you are doing is creating a battery. Because of standard electrode potentials copper is more likely to deposit on copper then iron. When copper atom deposits the Cu2+ ion needs 2 electrons. At the same time Fe atoms want to get rid of electrons in order to forms positive ions (Fe2+ and/or Fe3+). The wire link between copper sheet and iron scrap provides easy way for electrons to travel from one end to the other, thus speeding up significantly the whole process.
At the same time, because Cu deposits on different electrode than Fe ions are taken from the Cu deposits do not block electrolyte from beeing in touch with Fe scraps what speeds up the process even further.

The smaller distance between copper sheet and iron scrap the better - smaller travelling distance for electrons.
The thicker the wire link between cooper sheet and iron scraps the better - thicker wire means less resistance.
The best wire link is copper one - lowest resistance.

Have fun :mrgreen:


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## Geo (Aug 13, 2011)

zinc (or die cast) is the fastest way to drop copper from solution but difficult to find in large enough quantity. some automotive carburetors are made of zinc. both aluminum and zinc will react the same way very vigorously and create alot of fumes and heat,so if you use either of these add your reagent in small increments and wait till the whole piece has been dissolved before adding another. as far as contaminating both aluminum and zinc will burn away before your copper is fully smelted.


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## Harold_V (Aug 14, 2011)

Geo said:


> zinc (or die cast) is the fastest way to drop copper from solution but difficult to find in large enough quantity. some automotive carburetors are made of zinc. both aluminum and zinc will react the same way very vigorously and create alot of fumes and heat,so if you use either of these add your reagent in small increments and wait till the whole piece has been dissolved before adding another. as far as contaminating both aluminum and zinc will burn away before your copper is fully smelted.


I'm curious why you'd use a metal that has reasonable value when scrap steel will accomplish the task, and it's cheap and plentiful. 

Harold


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## Geo (Aug 14, 2011)

Harold_V said:


> Geo said:
> 
> 
> > zinc (or die cast) is the fastest way to drop copper from solution but difficult to find in large enough quantity. some automotive carburetors are made of zinc. both aluminum and zinc will react the same way very vigorously and create alot of fumes and heat,so if you use either of these add your reagent in small increments and wait till the whole piece has been dissolved before adding another. as far as contaminating both aluminum and zinc will burn away before your copper is fully smelted.
> ...


actually for some reason die cast is worth less than steel here (where i live).carbs bring 10 cents per pound and steel brings 12 cents per pound while aluminum on the other hand brings 58 cents per pound for old sheet. zinc is the most efficient metal for me to use to cement copper from solution.while beverage cans are essentially free scrap here because there is no deposit on the can as there are other states, i recomend beverage cans for a person that has time to collect them as it would be more cost effective than buying metal to do the process with.


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## butcher (Aug 14, 2011)

electrical conduit fittings are die cast zink.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Aug 14, 2011)

butcher said:


> electrical conduit fittings are die cast zink.



You can also have aluminum and steel fittings so make sure you test what you are going to use.


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## jr81452 (Feb 7, 2012)

If you know a tire store you can get a ton of Zn as used wheel weights. If you know a Pb caster (sinkers or boolits), they usually discard any Zn or Fe weights they come across. Only downside is they are usually painted and the clips are all Fe; but I melt the Zn in 50lb batches in a pot over a turkey fryer burner and cast my own electrodes. For about $5 bucks in propane it's the cheapest source of Zn I've found. YMMV


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## jimdoc (Feb 7, 2012)

jr81452 said:


> If you know a tire store you can get a ton of Zn as used wheel weights. If you know a Pb caster (sinkers or boolits), they usually discard any Zn or Fe weights they come across. Only downside is they are usually painted and the clips are all Fe; but I melt the Zn in 50lb batches in a pot over a turkey fryer burner and cast my own electrodes. For about $5 bucks in propane it's the cheapest source of Zn I've found. YMMV



How do you tell if they are pure zinc, and not an alloy of some sort?

Jim


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## jr81452 (Feb 13, 2012)

ASTM B6 - 09 states that a typical alloy may contain less then 2% of copper, aluminum, and magnesium; I don't see why wheel weights would be any different. But, unless you are shelling out the big bucks for Zn SHG you are going to have some impurity. Even SHG has percentages of impurities such as (Max) Pb 0.003, Cd 0.003, Fe 0.002, Sn 0.001, Cu 0.001, Al 0.001. The exact alloy of Zn weights would be costly to determine. Since the impurities have little if any effect for our purposes, I don't worry about it. YMMV.


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## Smack (Feb 13, 2012)

actually for some reason die cast is worth less than steel here (where i live).carbs bring 10 cents per pound and steel brings 12 cents per pound while aluminum on the other hand brings 58 cents per pound for old sheet. zinc is the most efficient metal for me to use to cement copper from solution.while beverage cans are essentially free scrap here because there is no deposit on the can as there are other states, i recomend beverage cans for a person that has time to collect them as it would be more cost effective than buying metal to do the process with.[/quote]

Don't let them have it for that Geo, you should be getting close to .40 per lb for clean zinc.


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## Geo (Feb 13, 2012)

for being a moderately sized city with 55K people, there are only two scrap yards so anyone who sells scrap here is at their mercy. i can get a better price if i take my metal to the next city to the west but unless i have a large load consisting of a ton or more the prices there are not much better. they make up for certain things by being lax on other things, for instance, i can sell contaminated aluminum that has at least 10% iron and still get clean old sheet. so i seldom have clean aluminum unless its a large quantity of extrusion. the only thing that has to be 100% is copper. even though i only sell a couple of hundred pounds a week, i still get dealers prices because i have dealt with these guys for about 30 years. the only zinc i get in any quantity is carburetors and lawn ornaments so i dont haggle much.


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## lysdexic (Nov 29, 2013)

Zinc casting alloy "pot-metal" is very easy to come by. Many hard drive cases and Disc drive carriages(?) are zinc. Screen door handles, the locking slides and other attaching hardware on aluminium windows (some are aluminum), propane regulators... it's everywhere. I either sell it with the light iron or save it till I have a few 5g buckets and cast it into ingots. It can be melted with a gas burner in an iron pan or pot (don't do it inside, if it gets too hot the zinc will start to vaporize(?) ). My scrap yard doesn't care much for buying zinc either Geo, but they treat me well.

I was considering casting square (or rectangular) zinc ingots to make them easier to hold in a drill press vice and making shaving with say a 3/4" drill bit, the leftover could be re-cast and used over. My problem is that zinc would also drop any cadmium and lead (and everything else below zinc). 4metals mentioned elsewhere about selectively dropping the cadmium with... was it sodium bicarbonate??? I can't find the thread right now :/ I've been reading many threads about this here on the forums but haven't figured out yet how to clean the copper up enough to melt it. It's still all "theory" to me right now anyway. I have no plans to actually "do" anything until I can recall the processes without having to look anything up again AND have a game plan for dealing with any and all wastes, spills etc.


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## meatheadmerlin (Nov 30, 2013)

I have removed the zinc coating from the inside of galvanized food cans with white vinegar. Foods that are particularly acidic, typically pineapple, have their cans plated inside. 
I'm not exactly sure what to do with the solution after that to get the zinc back to a metallic form, perhaps a pH shift to the basic range could work? Electroplating may also work, I need to research it more, but from what I read so far, you can plate with zinc using vinegar and dry cell batteries.


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## meatheadmerlin (Nov 30, 2013)

Lambskin said:


> Don't use aluminum foil it will cause alot of contamination. Someone correct me if I am wrong but I believe this to be true.


I have read that aluminum foil and pie plates are made of an alloy that contains iron and silicon. I have learned to keep these separate from my other aluminum in scrap loads, since my yard will lower the price I get if I include them with other aluminum items.
This pdf looks interesting:
Aluminium: Physical Properties, Characteristics and Alloys
http://www.alueurope.eu/talat/lectures/1501.pdf


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## Romix (Aug 15, 2014)

Weights on car weals made of Zinc. 
I tried displacing copper nitrate (aq) with zinc (s). 
Very slow reaction, took day to form few gramms. 
I decided to heat it up. Over heated it and formed black copper oxide.
Dissolved it in Hcl, dropped zinc in the solution.
All copper recovered very quickly.


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## Cerber (Jan 15, 2018)

From sour solutions I land copper usual iron from slightly warmed up solution.
At the same time the deposit of copper will contain nickel, cobalt, lead, tin and all other metals standing more to the right of iron among tension. Reaction is quite fast, and borrows as at most a day 2-3 in cold solution. In hot solution reaction very fast.
I wash out a half-scientific deposit hot mix of H2SO4+HCL acids before the termination of reactions. Then I wash out several times water for removal of the remains of acids and I direct to drying. The deposit is copper. Impurity of the accompanying heavy metals are dissolved in washing acids. Line of sedimentation of nickel, etc. I didn't consider metals yet, but I will surely work on it.


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## Rougemillenial (Feb 10, 2018)

kjavanb123 said:


> All,
> 
> I have finally produced a blue solution from leaching the copper ores with diluted acid. I use iron scraps to collect the copper, however it takes a long time to completely drop the copper using this methods. Since I am on small-scale yet, can I use zinc powder to drop the copper quickly? after adding soda ash to the solution to make it pH higher?
> 
> ...


looks like you’re on the right track to use soda ash. My major concern with metal salt reduction is that you’re going to need to dispose of whatever metal chloride you have left in solution with carbonate anyway. Especially with aluminum though, the reaction between aluminum and copper salts is extremely exothermic and I’ve had it explode on me because some sort of compound in the solution caused it to be prone to superheating which really does wonders to whatever surface you’re working on. In other words, unless on a small scale, do not use aluminum. Reaction is too violent even though I used aluminum ingots I made.


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