Chemical Forums
General Forums => Generic Discussion => Topic started by: Tara144 on December 12, 2014, 09:21:50 PM
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Hi!
I've tried google and read up about Hydromagnesite on Wikipedia, and I've searched for Hydromagnesite (Magnesium Carbonate) on these forums and found nothing helpful.
Ok, so here's my question.
You see a reaction which makes a lot of light, white-blue in colour, and leaves hydromagnesite powder of a very high purity (99.9%)
What is likely going on?
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Well, lets try to figure out what this question wants. What is hydromagnesite? What is it made of? Can you think of a way to get the ingredients together?
Frankly, I don't see an obvious solution to this question. But I suppose its enough if we try. That's what this forum is really all about. Check the Forum Rules{click} (http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=65859.0).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydromagnesite
This explains what it is and some sources for how it's formed and where. I've been looking for the solution to the reaction issue but not making any headway at all...
It doesn't burn, it's a flame retardant, so whatever is happening in the reaction is producing rather than using the hydromagnesite powder. We're dealing with a product, not an input.
I'm stumped. My chemistry background is really just first year university level stuff, I was hoping someone might be able to give me a research lead or else recognize what's going on.
Thanks
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Unfortunately, its sometimes hard to find a research paper for the most simple chemistry questions. While you're here, try re-reading the forum rules, that I posted above, we want you to do some of the work. Whoever assigned you this problem, probably expects the same, so you'll have to pardon me, if I fail to subvert that.
Thank you for the link to Wikipedia, I actually browsed it myself, as soon as you posted your question. Did you read it? What does it say? What is the chemical formula of hydromagnesite? What chemical elements is it made of? What chemical reactions have you recently learned, that might make sense as an answer to your question? If you check, I asked those questions in my post above. Do you have an answer to any of my simpler questions, that we can use to build an answer to your question?
The more I've been able to think about it, the more I've figured out I may have been hasty saying that didn't see an obvious answer. The problem is a little advanced for 1 year chemistry, but may be solvable.
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Alright, trying again...
https://www.google.ca/search?q=Hydromagnesite+powder+ball+of+light&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=KdqMVN3qJYGjgwT4zIOIAw
I'm trying to find a scientific explanation of what is happening. People are finding this powder after seeing light balls in crop circles. If they are being hoaxed, I'm trying to find out how they might be doing that.
This isn't a school assignment! I'm sorry my efforts aren't as sophisticated as you'd like but that's why I'm here! I have given you everything I've got and the first line of my post was written explicitly for your rules! I didn't say I'm a first year chemistry student, I said that was my level of understanding.
I'm finding the moderation on this forum very difficult to handle. I don't need threats in my personal inbox please, I just wanted some help.
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You see a reaction which makes a lot of light, white-blue in colour
Hydromagnesite is a magnesium compound. What do you know about magnesium?
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You can also go here http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert/2009whitepowder.php and scroll down to the analysis part of the article.
Borek,
I know it burns very brilliantly, but the product would be magnesium oxide, so I thought that was a dead end.
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(MgCO3)4 ·Mg(OH)2 ·5H2O 99.9%
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You can also go here http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert/2009whitepowder.php and scroll down to the analysis part of the article.
Borek,
I know it burns very brilliantly, but the product would be magnesium oxide, so I thought that was a dead end.
Magnesium oxide is exactly right. I'm not sure what would give hydromagnesite.
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You can also go here http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert/2009whitepowder.php and scroll down to the analysis part of the article.
If that's a source of your original question my answer is - prank.
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You can also go here http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert/2009whitepowder.php and scroll down to the analysis part of the article.
If that's a source of your original question my answer is - prank.
First I really wanted to rule out that this is the end product of a reaction. The bright light REALLY suggests that, but because it's not magnesium oxide coming out as would be expected, I'm not sure.
In addition the powder at that purity is lab-made, and costs about 750 per 100ghttp://www.alfa.com/en/GP100w.pgm?DSSTK=010796 (http://www.alfa.com/en/GP100w.pgm?DSSTK=010796). The amounts of powder found at the sites would make this really expensive.
Arckon wrote : "The more I've been able to think about it, the more I've figured out I may have been hasty saying that didn't see an obvious answer. The problem is a little advanced for 1 year chemistry, but may be solvable."
If you don't want to just tell me what you think, you could direct me to some specific reading. I don't mind doing the work, the problem is that I have come to a dead end. I'm not the only one obviously, the thread has been here a few days and nobody else seems to know either.
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Actually, I may have guessed right at the very beginning. What you've found on Wikipedia helps us confirm it. Briefly:
magnesium metal burn in air, producing a white powder, The powder is magnesium oxide and magnesium nitride, which are refractory materials -- they're already burnt, so they can't burn more and we can use them to contain other things we want to burn or heat strongly. I thought briefly that you desired product, magnesium carbonate, could be formed by burning magnesium in carbon dioxide. But that's not true, you just get magnesium oxide and carbon, in that case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium#Chemical_properties Wikipedia explains better -- hydromagnesite. is the product of gradual weathering of magnesium-containing rocks.
You can also go here http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert/2009whitepowder.php and scroll down to the analysis part of the article.
If that's a source of your original question my answer is - prank.
And now its clear, crop circle investigators have found weathered rock in the crop circles, and you perhaps, are looking for a scientific explanation using conventional chemistry. I don't suspect we'll succeed. If you'd had troubled us with your reference to begin with, this might have been a shorter thread. I know for sure I wouldn't have bothered to comment.
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Thanks for telling me what the wikipedia article did.
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Arckon has decided he is not interested in this, so this is written to others who may be interested. I just want to reiterate: The purity of the powder is 99.99%. This is not the product of geological formation. To reach that purity you NEED to make it in a lab. To purchase the material from a lab costs on the order of $750 for 100g. Much greater amounts were found in the fields immediately following the light balls. It seems to me there is very likely a chemical reaction going on, whether man made or not, but it is clearly not well understood.
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Along the lines of the lab work using CO2 and (in this case) brucite to produce hydromagnesite of high purity, I found the following; http://www.google.com/patents/EP2692691A1?cl=en The temperatures and time scales involved rule this out as something that explains the observations, but it may provide a clue to someone with a developed knowledge of chemical "mechanics" as to what is going on. It is also interesting that biological organisms produce the stuff.
For what it's worth...
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Just out of curiosity - any particular reason why you believe in every statement found on a random web page?
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Just out of curiosity - any particular reason why you believe in every statement found on a random web page?
You trolling?
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You trolling?
Quite the opposite - I am deadly serious.
You have read some random web page on which someone claimed rather extraordinary things, and you jumped in looking for an explanation. As Sagan put it - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Random web page saying "it was raining frogs", "I have seen the aliens with my own eyes", "the gasoline they sold us was saturated with (6aR,9R)-N,N-diethyl-7-methyl-4,6,6a,7,8,9-hexahydroindolo-[4,3-fg]quinoline-9-carboxamide", "the powder had the purity of 99.999%" is not an evidence of anything.
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Quite deadly serious! That sounds dangerous. My goodness.
You're right you got me. I just pulled up a random website and then believed everything it said. Sometimes I just enter a string of characters into google, and whatever comes up, I find a forum on the web somewhere pertaining to it and start asking (boom, thunder) deadly serious people what they think.
Love is better than hate Borek.
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I don't need to defend myself for trying to use science to explain something I don't understand. It offends you for some reason, and that's unfortunate for you, but I think it's within your power to change how you handle it. You're not in very good company historically for reacting (lol) that way, and should probably know better.
However I am willing to share a bit, maybe it will help you.
Nancy Talbott is a former research analyst from Harvard. She's retired now. She took an interest in the crop circle phenomenon because she realized it was physical, and therefore the scientific method could be applied. There is a whole lot of rubbish in the field (lol again) and she only trusted herself and good lab work. She connected with a couple other people who had a similar skeptical, scientific approach to circles, and they formed BLT Research. (Nancy is the "T") She's a very honest, down to earth, very scientific individual.
Well she and her associates found some astonishing things about the circles that suggested there was something other than guys with planks walking around at night, and did some very good field work. The details of that work are on the BLT website, there are some papers that were in Nature on her site if anyone cares.
I read the work because I'm curious about what crop circles are. Someone I know who is very reputable told me they were real mysteries with more to it than hoaxers. I was skeptical but I'm open minded.
What I'm in the process of doing is going through some of the work to see if I can come to understand what's going on. I outlined in the thread a few times now I think why I'm interested in finding a chemical explanation for the light and the powder, mainly the magnesium.
The lab work is all there, in the link given prior. You have to scroll down a bit because there are some photographs of Robbert at the start, but the report is there.
The address and contact information for the lab are in the report. P. A. Budinger has a long track record, you can check into that too. I encourage you to do so.
I had hoped coming here and posting observations would be sufficient that someone might say "Aha! I know what's happening there!"
What a crime eh?
:)
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Did you read the part at the end? I guess Eberl is another person you could look into, and see if you think he's trustworthy.
Addendum...
Shortly after posting this report on the white powder with the FT-IR and ICP-MS analyses a prominent mineralogist, Dr. D.D. Eberl, contacted BLT and offered to conduct x-ray diffraction analysis of the white powder also.
Dr. Eberl analyzed the sample by x-ray diffraction on a Siemens D500 X-ray diffraction system using copper K-alpha radiation from 5-65 degrees two-theta, 0.02 degree steps, 5 sec count time per step, using a graphite monochromator. He was able to confirm both the chemistry and FTIR we had run previously, stating that the white powder is "pure hydromagnesite." He also expressed the opinion that "it must be synthetic, because it is so pure." Its chief use seems to be as a fire retardant; its formula is:
Mg5(CO3)4(OH)2 ·4(H2O)
When it is heated the CO3 decomposes to CO2 and water (4H2O) is given off. (OH)2 also releases water, thus smothering fire.
It has another interesting property in that hydromagnesite is said to be fairly fluorescent and would, therefore, glow as long as it is exposed to UV light (Short UV = green, Long UV = bluish-white).
I find them all very trustworthy.
(Oh wait, he's actually a monkey. http://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=m6tAqpQAAAAJ&hl=en)
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OK, that's enough.