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justinhcase

justinhcase

Well-known member
Supporting Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2014
Messages
1,758
Location
Exeter ,Devon ,U.K.
I just thought this was quite funny.
I ordered four kilos of Iron Sulphate.
One kilo of just about usable Iron Sulphate arrived, and then four kilos of Pink Himalayan salt.
Well okay, they did not have enough fresh Iron Sulphate to send me and know not to send old while oxidized crap to me.
I am blocked on eBay by them because they tried to ship iron oxide instead of sulphate but neglected to block me from their website.
So sent me a higher value of product, so I did not hold them to their agreement to send me a specified compound.
Okay, I do not know exactly what I am going to do with 4K of Pink salt, but it is meant to be good, so no foul.
They have now sent me a third parcel.
Now I am just curious as to what random compound or mineral they decide to send me.
My regular supplier of ten years has not responded to emails, so am a bit concerned that good precursors may be getting hard to find.
https://www.intralabs.co.uk/iron-sulphate/4kg-iron-sulphate.html
 
Iron sulphate is easy to make


150 grams of nails
150 ml of Sulphric acid
300 ml of distilled water
Heat 80 centigrade 2-3 hours
Blue / green solution
Filter , cool , pour liquid off
Keep crystals in a mason jar w/ a plastic dukes mayonnaise lid
 
anachronism said:
Better bought in big sacks Justin. Green and lovely. Here you go.

Search Ferrous Sulphate 25Kg on eBay.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/294941355352?itmmeta=01HSZA28GVKAFK5G5H1RJMQSV1&hash=item44abdfed58:g:5qAAAOSwPh5iYnx3&itmprp=enc:AQAJAAAA0JrPaS4n0n9+ZgFo+5nO6PHVZCqoR69U3TJZag48lZP2HedFokblYdHXXjb5IqNGXEb+U3SPpZ8F9nopfpe2j64lTYIQKytfuPgRyQsCq/Rh4aMvH0mOUcb8FToG/Y1p/Dcwt9PPI2ut3e9X6u9DymL7oZd/FPUt34Xx9oU8RnQkoWToX3K0bj66B2mNy2iA63TwUgWP+OzKtdM1iufKnvcI/v7t3qJxYF6ZFzixvtyxCIOCNUhk7CObQve9fBePsLzoLpbSQAPSAZYqzLuepXc=|tkp:Bk9SR8KIierPYw
Click to expand...
Yes, that is the supplier who blocked me on eBay.
They sent me a sack that had turned completely to iron oxide, so then blocked me when I explained why they should not be selling out-of-date compounds.
I ordered from several suppliers this time because I do use Iron Sulfate as my main initial precipitant.
They have a third delivery coming through UPS this morning, but I have no idea what they are sending me.
The rest of the Iron Sulphate would be nice, but it might well be goat sanitizer for all I know.
I have thought of making my own, but in all honesty, I am running off my feet as it is, so to start in-house synthesis I would need to set up a new evaporation station to fit the work in.
Sometimes you have to calculate the number of hours of work involved and see if it is worth your time and energy to save a few quid.
 
Well that's not good of them. Mind you adding a dash of HCl sorts it out when it's brown. That given it shouldnt have been all brown in the first place as you rightly pointed out.
 
kurtak said:
Only if you "over shoot" the HCl --- it takes very little HCl to get your oxidized iron sulfate back to a good & useable iron sulfate - done it MANY times

Kurt
Click to expand...
Iron forms two simple oxides - iron(II) oxide (FeO) and iron(III) oxide (Fe2O3). The first one is commonly called ferrous oxide and the second one is ferric oxide. There is also, haematite, a heavy and relatively hard oxide mineral, ferric oxide (Fe2O3) but that is more a discussion for rust bluing, not refinement.
Ferrous oxide reacts with and dissolves in HCl acid to form a pale green solution, ferrous chloride.
FeO (s) + 2HCl (aq) → FeCl2 (aq) + H2O (l)
Ferric oxide reacts with and dissolves in the same acid to give a yellowish-brown solution of ferric chloride.
Fe2O3 (s) + 6HCl (aq) → 2FeCl3 (aq) + 3H2O (l)
I do not see how it can re-invigorate Iron(II) sulfate, though the green iron Chloride would make it look as if it had.
But only being a general technician maybe a chemist can see where our confusion is.
 
As Kurt said, it does work. I thin kit's a pretty established way of doing it too. The Copperas people use in the US almost requires it in order to be useful.
 
anachronism said:
As Kurt said, it does work. I thin kit's a pretty established way of doing it too. The Copperas people use in the US almost requires it in order to be useful.
Click to expand...
The more common forms are almost all slightly brownish to off white. Usually only very little green color to them. The original instruction I received for using them was to create a saturated solution of copperas dissolved in water, then add a small amount of HCl until it takes on a greenish color. It has always worked well for me.
 
Shark said:
The more common forms are almost all slightly brownish to off white. Usually only very little green color to them. The original instruction I received for using them was to create a saturated solution of copperas dissolved in water, then add a small amount of HCl until it takes on a greenish color. It has always worked well for me.
Click to expand...
Not being a chemist, I have to look up reactions before I understand them.
I can not see a reaction listed for iron oxide and hydrochloric acid that has anything to do with sulfate.
Iron sulfate undergoes thermal decomposition to form iron oxide, sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide. The balanced chemical equation is given as : 2FeSO4 (s)Heat→Fe2O3(s)+SO2(g)+SO3(g)
Once the Sulphur has escaped in a gaseous form, it would need to be replaced before it could form Iron Sulfate again.
Oxides have such a strong bond that would likely take a considerable amount of energy to break, iron oxide needs to be subjected to 1500c to achieve this in smelting.
 
anachronism said:
Try this thread from a few years back for the chemistry Justin.

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/precipitating-with-ferrous-sulfate.28739/

It's not a gaseous reaction, and interestingly one of the by-products is in fact HCl
Click to expand...
That thread is an interesting one about the function of ferrous sulfate on gold chloride.
That is another interesting question, as I can not see why it is so selective for gold.
A friend who designs water treatment plans says they use it as a way to remove other elements such as phosphors from treated water and iron being so reactive, I am interested as to exactly why it decided in our application to become selective.
It does produce HCL because we are reducing Gold Chloride.
Not really the same decomposition as straight oxidation.
 

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