Copper precipitation from copper sulphate solution

[Martijn]

May I know the reason for this please? I guess a visual here would be very helpful.

Purity of your product. Keeping dust out.

The most important thing i guess is getting all the copper out. Since aluminum sulfate is sometimes used to clean drinking water as a coagulant.

 

[murugan subramanian]

Be carefull with advice from new members, they tend to leave out some details or be plain wrong!

Yes the vessel will corrode. Without copper as well. Now murugan did not advise a catch basin or a 20mm thick vessel, right?

Which was my point: you have two reactions going on:
1: copper salt being displaced by Aluminum, and
2: aluminum dissolving by H2SO4.
Which reaction is favorable and in what ratio do these two reaction take place? I do not know.
So as far as stoichiometry goes: all the aluminum you will add will dissolve until there is no more H2SO4 left.
All the copper you have in solution will displace until there is no more copper in solution.

what is the purpose of this experiment if i my ask?

I taken 10mm bottom vessle,,my. Process over with in 30 min got it copper ..and remaining solution color little bit black and transperant

 

[murugan subramanian]

I taken 10mm bottom vessle,,my. Process over with in 30 min got it copper ..and remaining solution color little bit black and transperant

Taken out copper and wash atleast 3 to 5 time drinking water

 

[murugan subramanian]

I did my alchemy mercury solid using copper sulphate with nacl and lemon juice with aluminium vessle...my mercury turn into solid , I kept 3 hours in drinking water my mercury turn solid form ..never turn back liquid untill I heat

 

[Yggdrasil]

I did my alchemy mercury solid using copper sulphate with nacl and lemon juice with aluminium vessle...my mercury turn into solid , I kept 3 hours in drinking water my mercury turn solid form ..never turn back liquid untill I heat

You are not making much sense here.
What were you using Mercury for?
What happened was that you created some kind of Amalgam of Copper.
I hope what you refer to is clean water and it was never used for drinking after.

 

[Martijn]

Yep, indeed it makes no sense at all.
Using google translate and writing in short news paper headline style writing is not the way to go when giving chemistry directions. This message will also not be translated back to him as I intended i assume.
Are we talking about producing food grade or even lab grade checmicals or does it not matter how pure or which impurities are present for the customer?

 

[Martijn]

I did my alchemy mercury solid using copper sulphate with nacl and lemon juice with aluminium vessle...my mercury turn into solid , I kept 3 hours in drinking water my mercury turn solid form ..never turn back liquid untill I heat

We are discussing "cementing copper on aluminum". no mercury involved.
did you heat that mercury?

 

[Alondro]

Why use aluminum, which will also precipitate out a bunch of other less reactive base metals, when iron works just fine AND is dirt cheap compared to aluminum? Lead won't be in solution in the first place, since any lead in the original metal will be insoluble lead sulfate after the reaction with sulfuric acid.

So if this is coming from typical modern e-waste, there would be tin sulfate (low toxicity), nickel sulfate (pretty toxic) and antimony sulfate (mildly toxic, and will actually automatically decompose in aqueous neutralized solutions into antimony oxides) in the solution at significant concentrations.

After dropping copper with iron, those (and some other low-percentage transition metals, such as rare earths) will be present in various forms.

The nickel sulfate is the most common baddie in the mix. It's a potent allergen and respiratory carcinogen. It is also toxic to aquatic life.

You can use aluminum on this waste solution, after the copper has cemented, to then knock out all the other transition metals. Or, you can use sodium or calcium carbonate to drop the metals out as a mix of carbonates and oxides once the pH has become neutral to slightly basic. Most transition metal carbonates and oxides are almost completely insoluble at neutral pH.

The one nasty element that WON'T drop is beryllium, found in older e-waste. There won't be much in the scrap to begin with (only 4% of the mass of any beryllium copper present), and with a large volume of solution, beryllium carbonate is soluble enough (0.36g/L) that it'll mostly remain in solution at toxic concentrations (LD50 dose is 150mg/kg, and as little as .03mg/kg is toxic). So, another reason to watch out for beryllium copper/bronze parts!

The other option for the copper-depleted sulfate solution is simply to evaporate it away. Most of the sulfate salts will dry out, and leave you with a solid dry 'cake' that can be taken to toxic waste disposal or roasted and smelted back into a mixed metal mass. Most of the sulfates will decompose to metal oxides readily at normal smelting temps and then the oxides reduce to metals with carbon added.

 

[J.Najam]

Purity of your product. Keeping dust out.

The most important thing i guess is getting all the copper out.

Got it boss! Thanks. Still working on it though. On another note, why is it that some places on google stainless steel is recommended against corrosion and some places it isn't? I'm kind of confused between this conflict of information out there... Will it really work or not? And what are the recommendations for fiberglass lining as well? How would that fare if not Teflon?

So if this is coming from typical modern e-waste

Oh no no, this discussion is basically about recovering Cu from processed Copper Sulfate.

I did my alchemy mercury solid using copper sulphate with nacl and lemon juice with aluminium vessle...my mercury turn into solid , I kept 3 hours in drinking water my mercury turn solid form ..never turn back liquid untill I heat

Although it is unnecessary here, you're referring to the ancient India technique of purifying mercury (rasayan samskar) right?

remaining solution color little bit black and transperant

per highlighted in bold... I'm inexperienced regarding this, maybe the sulfuric of the sulfate reacted with your vessel or some other impurities in the reagent you used?

 

[Martijn]

Got it boss! Thanks. Still working on it though. On another note, why is it that some places on google stainless steel is recommended against corrosion and some places it isn't? I'm kind of confused between this conflict of information out there...

There are many different stainless steel alloys. They all have their own properties.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Got it boss! Thanks. Still working on it though. On another note, why is it that some places on google stainless steel is recommended against corrosion and some places it isn't? I'm kind of confused between this conflict of information out there... Will it really work or not? And what are the recommendations for fiberglass lining as well? How would that fare if not Teflon?

Oh no no, this discussion is basically about recovering Cu from processed Copper Sulfate.

Although it is unnecessary here, you're referring to the ancient India technique of purifying mercury (rasayan samskar) right?

per highlighted in bold... I'm inexperienced regarding this, maybe the sulfuric of the sulfate reacted with your vessel or some other impurities in the reagent you used?

There are several classes of Stainless Steels.
None is very strong against HCl but many are "immune" to Nitric.
So it depends entirely of class of steel and which acid.

 

[J.Najam]

Many thanks for the direction, on may way to some research

 

[Alondro]

Got it boss! Thanks. Still working on it though. On another note, why is it that some places on google stainless steel is recommended against corrosion and some places it isn't? I'm kind of confused between this conflict of information out there... Will it really work or not? And what are the recommendations for fiberglass lining as well? How would that fare if not Teflon?

Oh no no, this discussion is basically about recovering Cu from processed Copper Sulfate.

Although it is unnecessary here, you're referring to the ancient India technique of purifying mercury (rasayan samskar) right?

per highlighted in bold... I'm inexperienced regarding this, maybe the sulfuric of the sulfate reacted with your vessel or some other impurities in the reagent you used?

So if it's relatively pure copper sulfate, then absolutely use iron to cement the copper. Just make sure the solution is dilute enough that the copper won't form an impermeable crust around the iron.

You can also do what I do for my larger volume of waste, and use a simple shorted galvanic cell setup: a big iron rod on one side of the solution, a copper rod on the other, and a copper wire connecting the two held outside the solution. This sets up an internal electric current that rapidly reduces copper from solution onto both the iron AND the copper rods.

The solution does need to be at an acid pH for it to work. Right around pH 2 seems to work very well. I usually acidify with HCl, as the presence of a little chloride ion appears to facilitate the process. Sulfate solution alone is rather slower, probably due to complicated electrochemical ion potential stuff I can't explain, cuz it's been 25 years since chemistry class, lol.

 

[Argentum Auricle]

Instead of dropping copper out of sulfate solution via displacement reaction, why not use electrolysis to electro-winn pure copper out of solution onto a cathode?

 

[Yggdrasil]

The OP is trying to displace the Copper with Aluminum and thus have two salebale products.
Copper and Aluminum Sulfate.
I do not know if this is feasible economically though.

 

[J.Najam]

So if it's relatively pure copper sulfate, then absolutely use iron to cement the copper. Just make sure the solution is dilute enough that the copper won't form an impermeable crust around the iron.

You can also do what I do for my larger volume of waste, and use a simple shorted galvanic cell setup: a big iron rod on one side of the solution, a copper rod on the other, and a copper wire connecting the two held outside the solution. This sets up an internal electric current that rapidly reduces copper from solution onto both the iron AND the copper rods.

The solution does need to be at an acid pH for it to work. Right around pH 2 seems to work very well. I usually acidify with HCl, as the presence of a little chloride ion appears to facilitate the process. Sulfate solution alone is rather slower, probably due to complicated electrochemical ion potential stuff I can't explain, cuz it's been 25 years since chemistry class, lol.

Thanks and appreciate your response, I'd still drop the CU with FE powder and make ferrous sulfate as a sellable, which I'll look into should I find the right buyer. Right now, I'm kind of open to any sulfate(Zinc, Aluminum, Iron) as long as it stays on the economical side.

The OP is trying to displace the Copper with Aluminum and thus have two salebale products.
Copper and Aluminum Sulfate.
I do not know if this is feasible economically though.

Thanks for clearing it out once again Although I'm completely hopeful, fingers still crossed

On the other hand I am done with my first batch of

CuSo45h20 125g
Aluminum consumed 11.59g
Yield 32g

Great on this end

However, to understand the stoichiometry better (as I got 13.58g of AL required to drop the aforementioned copper), I did a little search again and look what I found, three different responses by different chemists for the same question:

How many grams of solid copper will theoretically be produced when 2.2G of aluminum is reacted with 14.4G of copper (II) sulfate? Which reactant is the limiting reactant? Show work. Be sure to include units. 2Al+3CuSo4→3Cu+Al2(SO4) 3

1,
Al=27. . . . . CuSO4= 160……. . . . .Cu:64

2Al. + 3CuSo4–––>3Cu+Al2(SO4) 3

54g………480g. .. ..…192g

2.2g……….14.4g Limiting reactant is CuSO4 because :

2.2/54 ratio is higher than 14.4/480 ratio. Al is excess.

Copper to be produced:

480 g CuSO4 –––––> 192 g of Cu

14.4 g CuSO4––––––> x

x = 14.4*192 / 480 = 5.76 g of Cu

2,
find moles of substances using the equation: n=m/M so for copper sulfate it would be n=14.4/159.6= 0.09 mols
then since the ratio of copper sulfate to copper is 3:3, the moles would be the same (0.09 mol)
this time rearrange the formula into m=nM so m=0.09x342.15=30.8 grams

3,
2 moles of Al = 2×27g =54g

3 moles of CuSO4 = 3(63.5+32+4×16)g= 478.5g

3 moles of Cu = 3×63.5g = 190.5g

54g of Al reacts with 478.5g of CuSO4

So,2.2g………………………478.5×2.2/54= 19.49g of CuSO4

But only 14.4g of copper(ii) sulphate added in the reaction vessel. Thus,CuSO4 is the limiting reactant.

Now,54g of Al produces 190.5g of Cu

Therefore,2.2g………………..190.5×2.2/54= 7.76g of Cu

How do I even understand which one of them are correct to double check my mistake???

I really need help understanding the calculation regarding this reaction.

Many thanks in advance

 

[J.Najam]

The OP is trying to displace the Copper with Aluminum and thus have two salebale products.
Copper and Aluminum Sulfate.
I do not know if this is feasible economically though.

You were right! Turns out the Copper Sulfate seller was trying to lure me in with a very low price. Less than half of what other market sellers are selling at.. Now that he caught my interest, he jacked up the price two folds. Hence, now it isn't economical anymore.