Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology => Topic started by: eric2011 on 19/05/2021 15:09:53
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Hi does anyone know how can I extract zinc metal from brass with acids and some salts at home? When I searched through youtube I found people dissolving brass in nitric acid. How and is it possible to add some metal salt to precipitate zinc?
Gracias
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Brass will dissolve in nitric acid.
The process will result in the production of toxic gases like nitrogen dioxide.
Eventually, you will have a solution of zinc nitrate and copper nitrate.
If you carefully add an excess of sodium hydroxide to that solution, you will get a solution of sodium zincate, and a precipitate of copper hydroxide.
Why do you want to?
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How much time do you have?
Boats have a problem that salt water will leach zinc out of brass leaving a copper sponge behind.
They also frequently use a zinc anode for galvanic corrosion, with the zinc anodes slowly being eaten away.
I would think you could speed up the process and improve recovery with a battery.
I may get it backwards... but I think a zinc cathode connected to positive, and the brass connected to negative. The salt may not matter a lot, although I think chloride salts are discouraged because they can release chlorine gas. Thus NaOH, KOH, or perhaps an acid.
Over time you should get a similar copper sponge as one would get by using brass screws in a salt water boat, and the zinc would plate onto the positive
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In principle, you can distill the zinc out of molten brass.
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I want to obtain zinc metal from brass
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Sell the brass; buy zinc.
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Of course the easiest way to extract zinc from a US penny would be to get one made in the last 20 years and carefully sand off the outer layer of copper/bronze.