Dropping Chloride Metals One At A Time - Is It Possible ?

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RLS0812

Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2018
Messages
9
Location
Bucks County PA
I do not have a chemistry background, and Google is not being helpful.
I have been experimenting with AR ... I end up with a 'soup' of several metals all dissolved as chlorides.
Is there an easy ( and cheap ) way to drop the following metals, one at a time ?
Copper
Aluminum
Lead
Real Tin
Nickel

Thank you in advance.
 
No, it is not very easy and certainly not profitable.
You have Cu, Pb, Sn, Al, Ni.
Assuming, you did use aqua regia then evaporated and treated remains with water.
You will find tin and lead already precipitated, tin in form of difficult to filter metastannic acid and lead in form of chloride.
Mixture of lead chloride and metastannic acid should be stirred 2-3 times with 1M HCl and centrifuged.
Lead will go to solution as PbCl2 is to a degree soluble in it. Metastannic acid will stay as a precipitate.
You can now precipitate lead with solution of sodium sulfate.
Insoluble PbSO4 will form.

Filtrate from initial work up of your evaporated AR product need to be treated with solution of sodium sulfate to precipitate remaining lead as PbSO4.

You will filter of PbSO4 and in solution there is a mixture of Cu, Ni, Al in form of chloride salts.

You will treat it with solution of sodium iodide.
Following reaction takes place:

2CuCl2 + 4NaI --> 2CuI + I2 + 4NaCl.

CuI is not soluble in water, so you will filter it off.
Iodine will dissove in excess of of NaI solution.

Now you have to evaporate it all to dryness and warm remaining solids a bit to get rid of Iodine (it will evaporate).

Dissolve in water all remains, add a bit of 1M HCl if there is any precipitate. Bring pH to 3-4 and pass H2S gas. Nickel sulfide will precipitate. Filter it off.

Now you can precipitate last remaining metal (aluminium) with 8-hydroxyquinoline and fiter it off.

So you have it all separated.

In industry they would do it differently. Most likely they would dispose it off as toxic waste or treat with sulfates, filter off Pb & Sn from solution and then separate Cu and Ni electrolytically.
Tin and lead would be then disposed off as toxic waste.
 
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