December 09, 2024, 11:20:50 AM
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Topic: Identifying contaminant, likely iron and help separating it.  (Read 3718 times)

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Offline liviug

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Identifying contaminant, likely iron and help separating it.
« on: February 08, 2024, 01:37:39 AM »
I am processing some waste material back into copper sulfate. I had some elemental copper pouder and some copper carbonate mixed with sodium bicarbonate (resulted from washing of copper sulfate ustensils with sodium bicarbonate).

I started by filtering the copper carbonate and washing it 2 times with distilled water. Then I dissolved the teal pouder with some sulfuric acid resulting in the expected copper sulfate solution.

Expecting the solution to contain an excess of sulfuric acid I looked into some ways of converting that and the elemental copper pouder I had from attempting to reduce some Copper citrate with iron.

I added the copper pouder to the solution, poured some H2O2 and some H2SO4. It worked, the elemental copper, with help from the peroxide dissolved into the sulfuric acid and I was left with a blue Copper sulfate solution. However when heating it in order to concentrate it, I noticed a black pouder forming on the bottom which  exhibits magnetic properties. It is likely iron oxide impurities. My question is how did I get the pouder? what iron compound may have been in the solution that decomposes below 100˙c? It surely can't have been Iron sulfate, since that decomposes at waaay higher temperatures?

How can I remove as much Iron as possible? I can obviously filter it, but there's likely more iron compounds in the solution and it doesn't help I don't know the compounds or quantities exactly.

Thank you.

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