[TATER]

Hello, I would like to find a way to convert copper chloride to copper nitrate. Is there any way that a single or double replacement reaction would be possible? Or if you have any other suggestions any help is appreciated.

[John Cuthber]

Precipitate the copper as the carbonate by adding washing soda, wash it, then redissolve it in nitric acid.

[rogerxd45]

John Cuthber, on 6 September 2010 - 07:19 PM, said:

Precipitate the copper as the carbonate by adding washing soda, wash it, then redissolve it in nitric acid.

couldnt you just add an iron nail which would precipitate pure copper metal powder that could be dissolved back into nitric acid.

i like the step where you precipitate the ekemental copper from the the CuCl solution

so in the end you will have a solution of iron(ferric or ferrous.....i cant remember) chloride and copper metal
next the metal goes into the nitric acid and he has the copper nitrate.

so he gets his copper nitrate but he also has some of the iron chloride solution that might be useful down the road in a different experiment.
when i did this i got some beautiful green crystals from the iron chloride solution after i evaporated the water

im pretty sure it was IronII chloride/ferrous chloride because of the green crystals.....but i dont think i got all the HCL reacted since some of the crystals turned yellow which sounds like Iron III chloride/ferric chloride.

so what solution is left over in the above post about using washing soda? is it sodium chloride?
well if it were me i would rather have some iron chloride to hold onto incase i needed it, since NaCl is so easy to get there would be no reason to save it

This post has been edited by rogerxd45: 16 September 2010 - 02:01 PM

[TATER]

Thank you for the replies but nitric acid is the problem. This is why I was wondering if some kind of displacement reaction was possible. I already tried dissolving copper ii hydroxide in nitric acid made from a neon sign transformer. The hydroxide did dissolve and to confirm that the reaction had formed copper nitrate I passed a small amount of acetylene gas through the solution but no precipitate was formed so I think my solution was too weak. Copper ii hydroxide is insoluble so if it did dissolve then why didn't any precipitate form after the acetylene was bubbled through. My only theory at this point is that so little precipitate formed that I simply couldn't see it