Electrochemistry Nitric battery?

[bisjac]

I have let my friend experiment with some copper nitrate solution i had left over. he was off copper plating some small menial objects of his.

he had asked me about a possibility of making some sort of wet cell battery out of the solution. there seems nothing profitable or an efficient use of the solution that i can think of. short waste salts or acids that may be recovered once the solution dried/evaporated down?

from my understanding; him and his kid are playing with the idea of using the electrolyte and some (copper/zinc/nickel?) coins to make a battery to light a bulb and just enjoy the experiment. i dont know all the details of how the planned to do so.

i am interested in waste material or some chemical that can be recovered afterward.
just a curiosity. since lead batteries i thought left salts of sulfuric acids as waste in some situations.
then there were questions of copper nitrate salts that may be left behind when dehydrated.

please educate me a little, whoever might know.

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

Sounds like you have a few questions, the Nitric Battery title threw me off a little. So correct me if I understood your post wrong, but I'm going to attempt to answer your questions.

First, it sounds like you want to figure out a way to properly dispose of your waste material. Check out this thread, specifically the directions that 4Metals posted. It's the way you should clean up your waste so that you can properly dispose of it.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=1300

About your friend that wants to make the battery experiment with his kid.

Sounds like they should purchase a battery electrolyte since making a batter is exactly what they are attempting to do. You can find battery electrolyte at auto stores, usually where the batteries are. It's mostly Sulfuric Acid, which you did mention in the post.

So far as making a battery out of Nitric Acid, or making any batter our of waste solution I wouldn't attempt it unless you have clear instructions for the experiment, and you are using laboratory acids. I have no knowledge of how to make a Nitric Acid battery.

There are however video's on YouTube on how to make a salt water battery. That might be better for an experiment, and you might want to mention it to your friend.

Using waste material for anything, in my opinion, is probably not a good thing to do. If there was a way to re-use the waste product, safely, then I imagine Industry would already be using it for that application, and the information would be widely available even to the general public. There are just too many variables, for example, dissolved copper in a sulfuric acid cell will conduct electricity much better than when it's not present. If you are attempting to make a batter out of solution that is pregnant with Cu, you may run into any number of problems with it conducting electricity better than what a normal battery would. That might sound good, but in a battery that might cause a lot of problems.

Once you create waste, the only thing you should be doing with it is processing all the heavy metals out, neutralizing it, then properly disposing of it.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

bisjac,

Have you read Steve's post about reusing your nitrate solutions in the Silver section? I haven't had an opportunity to give it a try yet but it looks like a very interesting way to stretch your nitric acid. Here's the link Processing Sterling Silver without nitric acid.

Dave

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

bisjac,

Have you read Steve's post about reusing your nitrate solutions in the Silver section? I haven't had an opportunity to give it a try yet but it looks like a very interesting way to stretch your nitric acid. Here's the link Processing Sterling Silver without nitric acid.

Dave

I haven't read that post yet, thanks for pointing it out.

 

[bisjac]

thank you guys.

yeah i have about 12 liters or so of hydrate- copper nitrate.

i have read plenty about safely diluting it and disposing it. but the price of nitric isnt cheap. the more i can do with the waste the better.

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

thank you guys.

yeah i have about 12 liters or so of hydrate- copper nitrate.

i have read plenty about safely diluting it and disposing it. but the price of nitric isnt cheap. the more i can do with the waste the better.

Use poor man's AR. LaserSteve actually has a few video's on it.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

bisjac,

I totally agree about finding every possible way to stretch your dollars - it's the frugal thing to do! :lol:

Check out some of butcher's posts. The man is a genius at out of the box thinking when it comes to reusing his waste.

As Irons says, everything but the squeel.

Dave

edited to correct spelling.

 

[bisjac]

i am still very amateur chemist. im sure thats been made clear lol

let me theorize for moment.
if i used the solution to copper plate some junk stainless items like scrap 6-cent spoons from the local goodwill. simply to pull out the copper as best i can.
what does that leave me with? i guess a now menial bit of the blue copper mixed with the nitric/water?
but then at this point, what has happened to my acid after all this use? would pouring 50ml nitric in, rejuvenate it almost new?
or has my starter nitric/water ratio become so diluted that it dosnt matter anymore...

 

[butcher]

Two dissimilar metals in an acid (or base),will create a battery, if an external current path is formed (a wire or a load like an lamp or a meter) the copper nitrate solution as electrolyte and zinc anode and copper cathode would work to make a small battery, the metals used would produce a certain voltage (about 1 volt per cell, using these metals), the two metals used depending on their potential difference, produce the voltage choosing these metals by compatibility with the electrolyte used and the potential difference, of the metals, the current would be determined by surface area of the electrodes, this battery would light an LED (very small load) or you could use a meter to see the voltage and current, although you could build several cell and light an a small incandescent lamp of higher voltage, you also could also use silver and copper as electrodes in a split cell, or some other metals for electrodes, look below for more info.

http://www.science.org.au/nova/023/023act01.htm

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&rlz=1R2RNQN_enUS457&q=electrochemical+cell+zinc+copper+nitrate&oq=electrochemical+cell+zinc+copper+nitrate&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_nf=1&gs_l=serp.3...3219.17782.1.18672.22.22.1.4.4.2.1219.9562.2-7j2j2j1j1j4.17.0.&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=4511e698c622b6ec

The stainless steel spoon at the second hand store are most likely a low grade magnetic stainless steel, and would most likely contaminate your solution with iron, you would want a nonmagnetic stainless steel cathode, and a graphite anode which is inert (will not dissolve metals into the solution, or will not put metals into the nitrate solution, this method Laser Steve posted is a good method to consider for reusing the solution.

Some of the nitric converted to gases in your original use of the nitric, sunlight also converted some of it to gas, then the metals reacted to form salts of these metals in solution, you can recover a portion of the nitric as in the method above (using the graphite anode to force copper from solution), It would have some copper left in solution but could be used in the electrolytic cell or used with heat to dissolve more copper, or some other base metal.

Or

You could also evaporate the solution (I would add copper powders to this evaporating solution, dissolving what would), once left with copper nitrate powders you could make nitric from them, heating them to gas and bubbling the gas into a solution of water and peroxide, leaving copper oxide powder.

Or

You can add copper (this can also be gold plated copper, the smaller the copper pieces the better, if gold plating is thick or copper pins are big cut them to expose the copper metal to the solution) add this to the copper nitrate solution, adding sulfuric acid, and distilling this you would get nitric acid, in the receiver, copper sulfate will be left in the reaction vessel, if gold plating was involved you can separate the gold flakes from the copper sulfate solution, this is very similar to how I kill two birds with one rock.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=6199&hilit=killing+two+birds+one+stone

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=11945&start=300