Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Citizen Chemist => Topic started by: Mr. Pink on March 31, 2005, 01:10:52 AM
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I know im new here, and please excuse the huge amount of topics. Anyways, my friend had a Li-Poly battery that burnt out, and he didnt want/need it anymore, so he agreed to give it to me, and i'd keep the Li for reasons that i would like to keep to myself ( i hope none of you are from the NRC :P). stupidly anough, he wanted to take out the sheets of Li himself. So, the next day at school, he gave me a bag of what looked like blackened tin foil. I sighed and brought home what i knew was next-to-useless Lithium Oxide. So, how do i get it away from the oxygen?
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What you actually has, is not Li2O but complicated mixture of Li3N ;LiOH and Li2CO3
Elementary Li ,exposed to wet air undergoes following reactions:
2Li+2H2O=2LiOH+H2
2LiOH + CO2= Li2CO3 + H2O
6Li+ N2=2Li3N (Li-nitride)
Li3N+3H2O=3LiOH +NH3
Be carefull with the mix.
Recuperation of elementary Li from it's salts is almost impossible task under conditions avialable for high school pupil:
1) Electrolysis of melted LiCl/KCl (t>500oC) in inert atmosphere or high vacuum.
2) Heating up to 1000 oC of liquid Al with Li2O under high vacuum ( 0.1Pa !)
Please , don't try any from the mentioned above methods! It is too dangerous.
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lithium is so reactive that it does not occur in free form on earth. if u need to obtain lithium, apart from obtaining its pure form, instead try to find a way to react lithium with other compounds to form the lithium compound u need
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Personally as much fun as it would be to throw the Alkali metals into water, I would never want to mess around with them do to their reactivity.
Also I was wondering though do they sell the alkali metals in their elemental form. A search I mad last year yielded no results with a supplier of the elemental alkalis.
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Sadly they don't. The pictures I have in my element collection are just artistic representations of what the pure alkali metals look like. ;)
(Back to reality, of course they sell them as pure elements. How else do you think schools and teachers get them?) ;D