If you get any resistance on syringe, avoid using too much force. I've had an o-ring fail on a syringe and it shot a nasty tight spray of chemicals to my face once. (Fortunately, no damage was done even though some of it was shot to my eye due to a small gap between safety glasses and the face. This is a good reminder of how easily something bad can happen.)
I thought I'd be the only one thinking that throughout the whole video. The density of mercury sure makes it scary to move it too much in a glass container...
I love your conscientiousness. A lot of RUclips "chemists" get all offended at the thought that they might make a mistake, so they eschew all the rules. I work with fluid-damaged electronics. Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes, your brain forgets there's an uncapped fluid next to your valuable equipment, and then it's broken. Or full of mercury. Best keep your mercury, and your soft drinks, in capped bottles!
+Nile Red Who will take mercury waste, though? Specifics! :) I have some contaminated filter paper from cleaning mercury that I need to deal with. It's currently sealed in a bag with sulfur to slowly convert to the sulfide.
I'm curious why there's not more total recovery... Does it just get really impractical? I mean I'd think at some point, it would be worth it just for some of the other elements/compounds... Probably a bit of "one man's trash" vs places to store it and the cost of doing it...?
I've never done it or seen it done by anyone, but going solely by reduction potentials, adding a chunk of copper to the mercury waste should reduce the mercury so you can recover it.
I have a Corning pyrex manometer with inner and outer tube that uses about 7.4 ml mercury(about 100g).It measures vacuum between 1 mm and 160 mm. The mercury got dirty with vacuum grease and some other junk. I used your syringe-cotton filter idea and it cleaned the mercury beautifully! I rinsed the outer tube with 3 molar nitric and dried with paper towel in a spiral...sparkling clean! My.pump pulls about 7mm..thank you for your ideas on this video!!!
The traditional way to clean Hg is to shake it with HNO3. Because HNO3 reacts with Hg, the operation should be performed quickly. To clean up Hg spills, first collect all the Hg you can. Then rub powdered S into any cracks and crevices that Hg might have gotten in to. The S reacts with Hg to form HgS, which is non-volatile, and poses no hazard. This info comes from the 1967 edition of "Lange's Handbook of Chemistry."
I cleaned up a bottle of old and totally filthy scummy mercury to a visibly shiny metal that I could pour without leaving any deposits on the surface of a beaker by using a capilliary-sized hole in the bottom of a plastic container and letting it dribble out under gravity. Whilst it obviously didn't remove any impurities dissolved in the mercury, it did the trick for using the mercury for non-chemistry use.
These videos with handling mercury are pretty interesting to watch. Gives me a different opinion of the stuff after working for a company that did emergency response work, a lot involving mercury spills.
+Herkus Kaminskas Neutralize PH imbalanced compounds and get a chemical storage container and deliver it to your local community chemical waste facility. Don't pour the shit into your toilet. Done
Excellent!! I just recently recovered some Mercury from some large Mercury switches. This method of cleaning the Mercury will work perfectly for me.👍✌️
I love flasks and tubes so much. I saved my clean ones from when I took Chem in college. It was one of my favorite classes (I held on to the notebooks too, too much hard work to just throw away!). This video was really cool. I'm glad I found your channel. :)
Great video, I followed these steps to clean 1.2 L of switch scrap, in 200-300 ml increments. Even being careful, little tiny drops still got away from my primary containment, fortunately the secondary seemed to catch it. On my first two rounds of cleaning I had some nitrogen gas in the sep funnel when doing the Nitric Acid cleaning. I started washing more thoroughly after the caustic soda washing and the gas was not present in later washing. Also, I found it to be a good habit to keep returning the top most mercury in the sep funnel from each step to the beginning of the filtering process, my final product ended up being noticeably cleaner. Also I noticed that my later iterations seemed to have higher surface tension and hold bubbles a little longer, can you comment on what that says about the purity?
+Timothy Anderson I'm honestly not sure what that says about purity. As an update to this video though, you should not store the mercury under water as it can get "scummy" after a while. Store it without watee and in a secondary container with some sulfur in it
i'd love a q+a video! personally i dont have much questions because you know exactly what draws people's curiosities in and answer them, but i'm sure questions you find are really worth answering~~
I have a couple of old mercury switch thermostats with a lot of mercury. Someone at my workplace wanted me to just yeet them in the dumpster. Watching this makes me feel confident I could safely purify and contain the mercury my coworkers and I might continue to find in old hvac systems.
Back in the 'olden days" (1970's) a quick way to clean mercury was to pour it into a leather shammy and squeeze it through by hand. Very easy and simple for removing dirt, dust and scum. The mercury goes through the pores of the leather like water through a towel (but without being absorbed).
Yea, back in the days when people thought it was intelligent to put asbestos in their homes, and lead in their gasoline so they can inhale it. In other words, it's a stupid idea.
@@shawnpitman876 Oh, you are soo clever. Actually, lead in gasoline made perfect sense and still does for aircraft. And using a shammy to clean mercury of dirt, dust and particles is still valid and perfectly safe when done with common sense care on a occasional basis. Go away smarty pants.
@@KB4QAA No, lead in gas never makes sense, not if you care about YOUR OWN HEALTH more than the health of your engine. Ya know, like any person who isn't riddled with brain damage from eating lead paint and inhaling lead their whole life. But keep showing everyone how you'll try and justify killing yourself to save a few cents, like the drooling buffoon you are.
@@KB4QAA I have no idea what Shawn said (the only comments I can see are your first one and your most recent one), but leaded gasoline is unambiguously terrible and should never be used if its exhaust is going to be vented into the atmosphere.
@@General12th "Should" is a nice feeling. But for the moment it is necessary until a satisfactory replacement is developed, tested and certified for certain aircraft. Work has been ongoing since the mid 70's to develop it, and we still don't have it. It isn't for lack of trying. It's a tough nut to crack.
could you eventually do some videos on what you do with waste and what kind of things you can do with it, such as whether or not some of the chemicals can be recovered, recycled or not
***** I prefer to stay on the things that are provable and backed by science. So flat eart and creationism are good, but 911 would be hard (besides the steel beam one)
I distill mercury in ordinary pyrex glassware. Set up for simple vacuum distillation. Add some iron and copper powder to your mercury as it will make it boil from the top. Use air to cool the condenser and have the receiver in a water bath, ice isnt needed. Its fun to zap the apparatus with a handheld tesla coil as it is actively being distilled.❤
+Flick Cogswell This is youtube. You can post whatever you want on whatever video you want. Quit being such a baby, especially because he made a lighthearted joke about your candidate of choice and you threw a big hissy fit.
+Flick Cogswell Because this is youtube and you are making a big deal out of a lighthearted joke. Idgaf if you like Sanders, Trump, Clinton or a chicken McNugget, people have the freedom of speech.
Your possible future video on Nitrous Oxide made me think that an interesting video might be exploration of selective catalytic reduction of NO and NO2 using a catalyst and Urea. This is what the Diesel Exhaust Fluid is used for that's sold at truck stops. DEF is 37% Urea . Modern diesel trucks inject this into the catalyst system that breaks down the NOx emissions from the truck into N2, O2, and H2O. And as a tie in we have the recent "Diesel Gate" from VW.
Does mercury nitrate pass through latex gloves as easily as dimethylmercury? I saw a horror story a while ago about a female scientist who accidentally got a couple of drops of DMM on her glove and it passed through it like paper towel... she died painfully.
Wow the glassware hold through the mercury well ! Next video for elemntal series or extractions its been a while since them As always nice video nile pls do a Q&A
Powdered sulfur on spilled mercury will convert it to the sulfide which has insignificant vapor pressure. Old electrochemist's method for treating mercury spills that got into cracks.
Awesome video! I have a couple pounds of mercury that I've been needing to clean. However, I store mine in an erlenmeyer flask w/ a rubber stopper which I then keep in a plastic jar in the event the glass jar shatters. Should I add a layer of water to be extra safe against vapors?
+Nile Red Thanks. It's weird I always notice a few tiny beads up top between the stopper and the glass. I guess this must be the vapors re-condensing back into liquid form.
You might have mentioned this in one of your previous videos, but is there a reason to vent the bottle between shakes even when its only mercury and water? Is this to make sure there is no pressure (or vacuum) buildup, or is there another reason?Great videos btw, thanks for uploading.
It is always a good idea when using a separatory funnel. A lot of solvents will generate pressure when you shake them, or maybe a gas is produced (like CO2). If you don't vent it, you risk popping off the stopper, even if you are holding it in place.
If you have mercury that has been in contact with other metals and formed amalgams how would you chemically separate mercury to ensure purity? Could you turn it into a salt, crystallize it out and recover the elemental mercury or would that be way too much work to be worth it?
Thanks for your video, very informative. I have some dirty Hg from a precision clock regulator which has dirty Mercury on show I will only need your first filtering stage....Cheers.
The sodium hydroxide can saponify vegetable or animal fats, but not petroleum oils. If petroleum oils were combined with the mercury, I'd think to use a detergent to emulsify them in the water.
Interesting stuff :) for the videos being edited, I'd like to see the iodine clock reaction. For the future videos, a pseudoscience series sounds interesting
this seems dumb . but while working with mercury if it is only contaminated with oxides will it mess up the reaction ? i spilled some mercury once from a 20 year old thermometer and when i collected it in a old glass storage container it split into two layers . one was Grey and other shiny . which is the oxide layer .
I just need to remove condensation that has accumulated in a vacuum carburetor, synchronizing tool that I’ve had for about 30 years. When I hook up before hoses to manifolds on a motorcycle to try to balance, the carburetors, the four glass columns get varying degrees of water above the mercury in the tubes… how can I remove just the water that has accumulated in the reservoir. There’s probably less than an ounce of mercury in the Reservoir total. I considered using something other than mercury in place of the mercury in this for tube vacuum balance tool called “carb sticks “that was available back in the 70s and 80s when I was a motorcycle mechanic.. Maybe something like mineral oil? Or alcohol? Or just distilled water?
Would you be able to put up a new site for the procedure? The current one does not take me to the proper site and all I can find are articles about mercury clean ups from spills rather than cleaning previously used Mercury. Thanks.
Can this be adapted to clean up gallium based alloys?! Also, how do you get rid of trace amounts of aluminum from gallium indium alloy? Heating it with water? Heating it with dilute hydrochloric acid? Maybe in the future, I will get tin and hydrochloric acid and make an aqueous solution of tin (II) chloride. Then alloy the gallium indium alloy with aluminum in water and then add the tin (II) chloride. Then gallium and indium will combine with tin to form the galinstan. Thiophene might be cool too.
I have some Mercury and i took a look at it after watching this video and notice that it turned antique gold color. I would share a photo but there is no button for that.
Why you would prefer to have it under water as opposed to having it covered in oil is beyond my grasp. Why would you prefer something as reactive as water over inert oil...
Why do you sometimes use the ceramic filter with disposable paper for vacuum filtration and sometimes the glass one with membrane? I only use a ceramic one and disposable filter paper,s but might there be an advantage to investing in a glass filter?
+Tom Dunn The glass one is chemically resistant. Also i generally prefer to use it because i dont need to find the rubber adapter that i always lose... For more inert stuff, both can be used though.
It’s cool how mercury looks like it is away from the inside of the glass, like powder does, and water looks like it’s wider in the glass. Assuming this is to do with the way water bends light? But it makes the Mercury look thinner lol
No, gallium is not nearly as resistant to acids and alkalis as mercury. Just like aluminium, gallium reacts with the sodium hydroxide used in one of the steps. It is also unsafe to carry out the 3M nitric acid step with gallium.
If you get any resistance on syringe, avoid using too much force. I've had an o-ring fail on a syringe and it shot a nasty tight spray of chemicals to my face once. (Fortunately, no damage was done even though some of it was shot to my eye due to a small gap between safety glasses and the face. This is a good reminder of how easily something bad can happen.)
Did it hurt?
You alright?
@Corey Haha gay. Its funny because gay
You good
o ring is keyboard haha funny pog
I was really concerned about this separatory funnel snapping in any moment
+Janusz Januszowski haha it's a tough funnel :)
+Nile Red Oh my gosh when you are vigorously shaking it...
I thought I'd be the only one thinking that throughout the whole video. The density of mercury sure makes it scary to move it too much in a glass container...
+Sh4d0wch40s Yes, I've seen a vigorous mercury pour break glass before.
+Sh4d0wch40s No......I was with you there!
Can't tell if it was oil or Mercury, but at 5:05 some liquid flies out when you were venting the sep funnel. Just a heads up.
We got a blooper.
I love your conscientiousness.
A lot of RUclips "chemists" get all offended at the thought that they might make a mistake, so they eschew all the rules.
I work with fluid-damaged electronics. Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes, your brain forgets there's an uncapped fluid next to your valuable equipment, and then it's broken. Or full of mercury.
Best keep your mercury, and your soft drinks, in capped bottles!
How did you dispose of your mercury waste? Every source just says "properly" but nobody ever describes what that is!
+mrhomescientist Never do it improperly that is bad. Always do it properly....which means pay people to take it and make them deal with it.
+Nile Red Who will take mercury waste, though? Specifics! :) I have some contaminated filter paper from cleaning mercury that I need to deal with. It's currently sealed in a bag with sulfur to slowly convert to the sulfide.
mrhomescientist I am honestly not 100% sure. There are companies though that should. Also, some cities have yearly hazardous waste collections.
I'm curious why there's not more total recovery... Does it just get really impractical? I mean I'd think at some point, it would be worth it just for some of the other elements/compounds... Probably a bit of "one man's trash" vs places to store it and the cost of doing it...?
Throw it into a lake. There is so much mercury in our own drinking water that a small bit in a lake will make no difference.
I've never done it or seen it done by anyone, but going solely by reduction potentials, adding a chunk of copper to the mercury waste should reduce the mercury so you can recover it.
I have a Corning pyrex manometer with inner and outer tube that uses about 7.4 ml mercury(about 100g).It measures vacuum between 1 mm and 160 mm. The mercury got dirty with vacuum grease and some other junk. I used your syringe-cotton filter idea and it cleaned the mercury beautifully! I rinsed the outer tube with 3 molar nitric and dried with paper towel in a spiral...sparkling clean! My.pump pulls about 7mm..thank you for your ideas on this video!!!
The traditional way to clean Hg is to shake it with HNO3. Because HNO3 reacts with Hg, the operation should be performed quickly. To clean up Hg spills, first collect all the Hg you can. Then rub powdered S into any cracks and crevices that Hg might have gotten in to. The S reacts with Hg to form HgS, which is non-volatile, and poses no hazard. This info comes from the 1967 edition of "Lange's Handbook of Chemistry."
I cleaned up a bottle of old and totally filthy scummy mercury to a visibly shiny metal that I could pour without leaving any deposits on the surface of a beaker by using a capilliary-sized hole in the bottom of a plastic container and letting it dribble out under gravity. Whilst it obviously didn't remove any impurities dissolved in the mercury, it did the trick for using the mercury for non-chemistry use.
These videos with handling mercury are pretty interesting to watch. Gives me a different opinion of the stuff after working for a company that did emergency response work, a lot involving mercury spills.
OMG, you need to see Cody's Lab videos! He will practically bathe in the stuff!
I’ve seen other videos of his. He has a great channel when it comes to playing with the stuff.
Make a video on toxic waste disposal.
+Herkus Kaminskas
You can just consume it.
+Herkus Kaminskas Neutralize PH imbalanced compounds and get a chemical storage container and deliver it to your local community chemical waste facility. Don't pour the shit into your toilet. Done
feed it to the homeless
You've heard of NileBlue?
@@rimisakkablaramsa3002 This comment was made 5 years ago
Excellent!! I just recently recovered some Mercury from some large Mercury switches. This method of cleaning the Mercury will work perfectly for me.👍✌️
I love flasks and tubes so much. I saved my clean ones from when I took Chem in college. It was one of my favorite classes (I held on to the notebooks too, too much hard work to just throw away!). This video was really cool. I'm glad I found your channel. :)
Great video, I followed these steps to clean 1.2 L of switch scrap, in 200-300 ml increments. Even being careful, little tiny drops still got away from my primary containment, fortunately the secondary seemed to catch it. On my first two rounds of cleaning I had some nitrogen gas in the sep funnel when doing the Nitric Acid cleaning. I started washing more thoroughly after the caustic soda washing and the gas was not present in later washing. Also, I found it to be a good habit to keep returning the top most mercury in the sep funnel from each step to the beginning of the filtering process, my final product ended up being noticeably cleaner. Also I noticed that my later iterations seemed to have higher surface tension and hold bubbles a little longer, can you comment on what that says about the purity?
+Timothy Anderson I'm honestly not sure what that says about purity. As an update to this video though, you should not store the mercury under water as it can get "scummy" after a while. Store it without watee and in a secondary container with some sulfur in it
5:01 lol a piece of mercury flew out of the funnel xD
+LargeVirus nice banter
Cubeazza 5:00 *
Cubeazza ignore me I read 5:10
@@TackKeyNack 5:05
that's hilarious haha
i'd love a q+a video! personally i dont have much questions because you know exactly what draws people's curiosities in and answer them, but i'm sure questions you find are really worth answering~~
I have a couple of old mercury switch thermostats with a lot of mercury. Someone at my workplace wanted me to just yeet them in the dumpster. Watching this makes me feel confident I could safely purify and contain the mercury my coworkers and I might continue to find in old hvac systems.
Back in the 'olden days" (1970's) a quick way to clean mercury was to pour it into a leather shammy and squeeze it through by hand. Very easy and simple for removing dirt, dust and scum. The mercury goes through the pores of the leather like water through a towel (but without being absorbed).
Yea, back in the days when people thought it was intelligent to put asbestos in their homes, and lead in their gasoline so they can inhale it. In other words, it's a stupid idea.
@@shawnpitman876 Oh, you are soo clever. Actually, lead in gasoline made perfect sense and still does for aircraft. And using a shammy to clean mercury of dirt, dust and particles is still valid and perfectly safe when done with common sense care on a occasional basis. Go away smarty pants.
@@KB4QAA No, lead in gas never makes sense, not if you care about YOUR OWN HEALTH more than the health of your engine. Ya know, like any person who isn't riddled with brain damage from eating lead paint and inhaling lead their whole life.
But keep showing everyone how you'll try and justify killing yourself to save a few cents, like the drooling buffoon you are.
@@KB4QAA I have no idea what Shawn said (the only comments I can see are your first one and your most recent one), but leaded gasoline is unambiguously terrible and should never be used if its exhaust is going to be vented into the atmosphere.
@@General12th "Should" is a nice feeling. But for the moment it is necessary until a satisfactory replacement is developed, tested and certified for certain aircraft. Work has been ongoing since the mid 70's to develop it, and we still don't have it. It isn't for lack of trying. It's a tough nut to crack.
Could you clean gallium, I have just short of 200 grams of the stuff, and I haven't been able to keep it clean.
You can also pick up drops of mercury with a strip of zinc.
Please do a video where you neutralize the waste water and the cotton!
Emil Almberg
I look forward to distillation of mercury, that sounds scary.
My vote is for a video about waste disposal or methylamine HCl. Do you plan to use your hexamine for that?
Have you been making biker meth?
could you eventually do some videos on what you do with waste and what kind of things you can do with it, such as whether or not some of the chemicals can be recovered, recycled or not
"MERUCRY WASTE"
might want to fix that.
+Connor Steppie haha, professional typo. Youve never heard of merucry?
***** Everything in general. The goal of the other channel is to be about science in general, so I am not confined to chemistry.
***** I prefer to stay on the things that are provable and backed by science. So flat eart and creationism are good, but 911 would be hard (besides the steel beam one)
Nile Red well, can't jet fuel make steel beams malleable? And not hard anymore?
Connor Steppie Pretty much
Water DOES NOT prevent mercury vapors from passing upward. The mercury diffuses upward through the water, then the vapor appears above the water.
I distill mercury in ordinary pyrex glassware. Set up for simple vacuum distillation. Add some iron and copper powder to your mercury as it will make it boil from the top. Use air to cool the condenser and have the receiver in a water bath, ice isnt needed. Its fun to zap the apparatus with a handheld tesla coil as it is actively being distilled.❤
How do you dispose of all different waste products?
+Carl Fürstenberg Definitely warrants its own video!
+Flick Cogswell This is youtube. You can post whatever you want on whatever video you want. Quit being such a baby, especially because he made a lighthearted joke about your candidate of choice and you threw a big hissy fit.
+Austin Anderson Agreed :-)
+Flick Cogswell Because this is youtube and you are making a big deal out of a lighthearted joke. Idgaf if you like Sanders, Trump, Clinton or a chicken McNugget, people have the freedom of speech.
is that what he does or what you think he does.
Would you do videos on the toxic waste disposal process and cleaning of mercury (or other highly toxic compound contaminated) glassware?
Me in Louisiana wondering why he cannot do a distillation outside during the winter as I prepare to sleep with my AC on….
Your possible future video on Nitrous Oxide made me think that an interesting video might be exploration of selective catalytic reduction of NO and NO2 using a catalyst and Urea. This is what the Diesel Exhaust Fluid is used for that's sold at truck stops. DEF is 37% Urea . Modern diesel trucks inject this into the catalyst system that breaks down the NOx emissions from the truck into N2, O2, and H2O. And as a tie in we have the recent "Diesel Gate" from VW.
Once again, excellent video! I'd love to see the denatonium benzoate synthesis next. That should be really interesting.
Does mercury nitrate pass through latex gloves as easily as dimethylmercury? I saw a horror story a while ago about a female scientist who accidentally got a couple of drops of DMM on her glove and it passed through it like paper towel... she died painfully.
Wow the glassware hold through the mercury well !
Next video for elemntal series or
extractions its been a while since them
As always nice video
nile pls do a Q&A
Always make sure to clean your mercury before drinking
Powdered sulfur on spilled mercury will convert it to the sulfide which has insignificant vapor pressure. Old electrochemist's method for treating mercury spills that got into cracks.
Did you clean it before or after it was in retrograde
I have seen/done "luminol", however I am interested in the "Benzaldehyde" video. As for future my vote is for the "Pyridine" video. ;-)
Awesome video! I have a couple pounds of mercury that I've been needing to clean. However, I store mine in an erlenmeyer flask w/ a rubber stopper which I then keep in a plastic jar in the event the glass jar shatters. Should I add a layer of water to be extra safe against vapors?
+christopherhug It's only dangerous if you open it and let the vapors out. A water layer is always good though. Prevents vapor leakage
+Nile Red Thanks. It's weird I always notice a few tiny beads up top between the stopper and the glass. I guess this must be the vapors re-condensing back into liquid form.
hmm, i am not sure enough vapors would come off to do that
You might have mentioned this in one of your previous videos, but is there a reason to vent the bottle between shakes even when its only mercury and water? Is this to make sure there is no pressure (or vacuum) buildup, or is there another reason?Great videos btw, thanks for uploading.
It is always a good idea when using a separatory funnel. A lot of solvents will generate pressure when you shake them, or maybe a gas is produced (like CO2). If you don't vent it, you risk popping off the stopper, even if you are holding it in place.
Methylamine, benzaldehyde, anddenatonium benzoate is my vote.
3:57 i would have tried to force it through the cotton with some water (the water used for storage to not contaminate more water).
If you have mercury that has been in contact with other metals and formed amalgams how would you chemically separate mercury to ensure purity? Could you turn it into a salt, crystallize it out and recover the elemental mercury or would that be way too much work to be worth it?
Mercury amalgams don't form by reacting, but by dissolving. You could simply distill the Mercury and use it
Thanks for your video, very informative. I have some dirty Hg from a precision clock regulator which has dirty Mercury on show I will only need your first filtering stage....Cheers.
Does this work with gallium too?
doesn't nitric acid dissolve mercury?
The sodium hydroxide can saponify vegetable or animal fats, but not petroleum oils. If petroleum oils were combined with the mercury, I'd think to use a detergent to emulsify them in the water.
Interesting stuff :) for the videos being edited, I'd like to see the iodine clock reaction. For the future videos, a pseudoscience series sounds interesting
Do you still plan on doing the distillation?
I do! I am just editing the huge backlog that i have now. I will do it soon though
this seems dumb . but while working with mercury if it is only contaminated with oxides will it mess up the reaction ? i spilled some mercury once from a 20 year old thermometer and when i collected it in a old glass storage container it split into two layers . one was Grey and other shiny . which is the oxide layer .
Add alcohol. It will remove all water. Just consider surface tension. Alcohol is lowest, water is high, mercury is very high.
I just need to remove condensation that has accumulated in a vacuum carburetor, synchronizing tool that I’ve had for about 30 years. When I hook up before hoses to manifolds on a motorcycle to try to balance, the carburetors, the four glass columns get varying degrees of water above the mercury in the tubes… how can I remove just the water that has accumulated in the reservoir. There’s probably less than an ounce of mercury in the Reservoir total.
I considered using something other than mercury in place of the mercury in this for tube vacuum balance tool called “carb sticks “that was available back in the 70s and 80s when I was a motorcycle mechanic..
Maybe something like mineral oil? Or alcohol? Or just distilled water?
Would you be able to put up a new site for the procedure? The current one does not take me to the proper site and all I can find are articles about mercury clean ups from spills rather than cleaning previously used Mercury.
Thanks.
Can this be adapted to clean up gallium based alloys?!
Also, how do you get rid of trace amounts of aluminum from gallium indium alloy? Heating it with water? Heating it with dilute hydrochloric acid?
Maybe in the future, I will get tin and hydrochloric acid and make an aqueous solution of tin (II) chloride. Then alloy the gallium indium alloy with aluminum in water and then add the tin (II) chloride. Then gallium and indium will combine with tin to form the galinstan.
Thiophene might be cool too.
Hey nile is it possible to change the makeup of mecury to make it non lethal? or turn it to gallium i doubt iit but im courious
luminol synthesis would be really cool as the next video :)
+JBFFSK18 Working on it! If not the next, it will still be soon
for the videos being edited luminol should surely be the next followed by iodine clock and for the future videos nitrous oxide is definitely the best
Still very dirty, make salt, recrystallize few times, then recover with copper.
I have some Mercury and i took a look at it after watching this video and notice that it turned antique gold color.
I would share a photo but there is no button for that.
I keep changing my water and it keeps getting grey coloured. Is it normal or is it just not clean enough yet?
I would love to see the "most bitter substance known" video next :)
@NileRed plz make methyl mercury
Why you would prefer to have it under water as opposed to having it covered in oil is beyond my grasp. Why would you prefer something as reactive as water over inert oil...
As an Ontarian, any suggestions on places to get storage bottles for Mercury, or the pipette/bottles?
Nile Red! Wouldn´t be better the wash the mercury with HCl or H2SO4 instead of HNO3?
+ChemicalMaster Honestly I don't know the reason 100% but I guess HNO3 is more reactive towards contaminant metals.
Nile Red But I think that these acids can react with contaminent metals while leaving the mercury untouched, unlike nitric acid!
So should I pour Mercury waste in a Small clay vessel sealed with a Clay Cap and Wax?I like my Idea.
would be cool to see an updated video.
What if your soluble impurity isn't solubile in nitric acid, say, gold or platinum, can you still remove it without distillation?
Nile i would like to listen about pseudoscience and I would also enjoy a Q&A video. By the way I love your videos, please keep doing these.
What use is last cotton filtering? It was said, that it may be not necessary, but I am wondering what could the desired gain could be.
Why so much water?
Vapor Volume displacement.
Where do you get your tools at such as beakers, hot plates, and mixers?
When distilling water (or any solvent) are solutes also present in the distilled product? if yes, to what extent?
Does mercury have to be oil free to react properly in a high explosives synthesis?
How to you clean the equipment and glassware you used seams risky to even use anything that touched the mercury.
Tried this try and remove the slag from my gallium.. not a good Idea. How would you go about cleaning gallium?
I was wondering how you get rid of the chemical waste?
Cody'sLab has demonstrated refining mercury from ore.
+robehickmann Really? that is cool. I thought he did but I wasnt sure. Ill check it out.
Will I ever need to clean mercury? No. Did I stop watching this video before the end? Also no.
I personally would like the new pharaohs serpent next, and calcium acetate filmed next
Can we clean mercury amulgum by this process for Zink lead or copper impurities.
Always wash your hands (before you eat,etc.)if you handle stuff like mercury
Is it mercury distillation time yet, is it warm up there in canada (greetings from wisconsin)
Thanks Nile!
What keeps you from just removing the water residue with a sponge?
Mercury can also be absorbed using a sponge, it wouldn't work
It actually doesn't, there are videos of it on youtube.
true, also normal paper tissue would work pretty well...
Why do you sometimes use the ceramic filter with disposable paper for vacuum filtration and sometimes the glass one with membrane? I only use a ceramic one and disposable filter paper,s but might there be an advantage to investing in a glass filter?
+Tom Dunn The glass one is chemically resistant. Also i generally prefer to use it because i dont need to find the rubber adapter that i always lose... For more inert stuff, both can be used though.
how about just disolving it into ammonia, filter it, and then precipitate with acetic acid ????
It’s cool how mercury looks like it is away from the inside of the glass, like powder does, and water looks like it’s wider in the glass.
Assuming this is to do with the way water bends light? But it makes the Mercury look thinner lol
How is liquid mercury made/found/purified?
Did the distill happen?
*Casually MacGyver's a vacuum out of spare lab equipment*
i usually pour some sulphur powder to mercury splashes to dont get poisoned
+Nile Red were to you buy your metals like bismuth from?
No idea how i came here, but this was an interesting video.
Nile red could you make a video on how to make hgCI2 from Mercury
Next video:
Cleaning hard Saturn With Sun
2016 was 6 years ago
6 years now
Thank you!
I'm a masters level chem student yet I don't like the idea of distilling mercury.
I think that kid breaks out plate mail and bubble wrap to leave his dorm.
can you use this method for cleaning grime and dirt out of gallium also?
No, gallium is not nearly as resistant to acids and alkalis as mercury. Just like aluminium, gallium reacts with the sodium hydroxide used in one of the steps. It is also unsafe to carry out the 3M nitric acid step with gallium.
Is that a syringe for ELEPHANTS??