brads3290

I've heard that copper chloride is really soluble in water.. I presume that the reaction you specified would result in a solution; is there any way to remove the water and have copper chloride in a solid (probably powder) form? I've had it on my copper electrodes before, I think, so it must be possible to solidify somehow. Could I boil the water out maybe?

Hey again guys, wondering if you can answer a couple of questions A while ago when I was playing around with electrolysis I dried out the anode (I think it was the anode) to find a green coating on it, which I suspected to be copper chloride, as I had added salt to the solution. I did a burn test on it, and sure enough the flame burned blue/green. However, since then I have not been able to produce copper chloride very well; it just seems to sometimes appear and sometimes not (and yeah, I am adding salt and using copper electrodes). When electrolysing water I also tend to get a blue precipitate (I believe it to be copper hydroxide - it displays many properties of it). A couple of days ago I had an idea to collect the copper hydroxide, which I did, and then mix it in a salt water solution and electrolyse that. My idea was that the electrolysis would break the bonds of the copper/hydroxide and the sodium/choride (and hydrogen/hydroxide from the water) and I would end up with sodium hydroxide and copper chloride (copper chloride being my goal). I wasn't too sure what would happen to the spare hydroxide from the water; hydrogen would bubble, and I thought the hydroxide ions might form more copper hydroxide with the copper ions in the water. It worked in theory, but in actual fact I got a green/brown sludge that wasn't interesting at all.. and most importantly, it didn't burn green Can anyone think of where I went wrong? Also, does anyone know why copper hydroxide doesn't burn green, and neither does copper oxide? This Wikipedia article seems to think they should: So apparently all copper compounds should burn blue/green.. The ones I got didn't, which is odd I thought. Any help would be much appreciated

Hmm.. That's interesting. So how does having a low voltage and really high current make it better for electrolysis? Does it depend on what you're trying to achieve, or is this just the generally accepted way to go?

Thanks for the great advice guys! In future I might have access to different solutions, but at the moment I'm just limited to adding different household things to tap water to create the solution. I've done it with salt (if the salt is dissolved properly, the water ends up cloudy blue, if it isn't dissolved, the water goes yellow when it's disturbed - Chlorine?). Could I make much Hydrogen if I used salt with copper electrodes? I don't really have access to gold at the moment. Also I don't have a way of measuring the current drawn (I'm yet to buy any proper equipment), though my power supply does cut out when I short the circuit (including adding too much salt, making the water too conductive), could that be a protective mechanism to prevent damage? The only other thing is that I'm pretty hesitant to use current that reaches dangerous level, as I've not had any formal training in this stuff, and I'd really rather wait till I'm more experienced to risk playing with anything that could give more than a mild shock. In the future I hope to figure out how I can access other chemicals, such as Sulfuric Acid and Copper Sulfate. Are there any substances other than salt that would work nicely? I've heard that Bi-Carb Soda works nicely, as does Vinegar and Sodium Acetate (the other product of the soda-vinegar reaction, right?).

Recently I've been trying out some electrolysis, just to observe the results (and catch the occasional bit of hydrogen ), and I'm hoping to start learning much more about chemistry in general, as at the moment I don't really know much about this. When I decided to first do the experiment, the only power source I had access to (that didn't provide a deadly current, that is) was an old 30v 333mA charger, on which I did some chopping and extracted the two terminals. I've been using this for the past couple of days to try different things, and I've read a couple of threads on here and I noticed mention that 12v is too high to get good results on some processes... Well I guess I'm out of luck there! This was on http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/14412-more-copper-electrolysis-fun/- post #4: Would anyone please be able to explain the differences, both in the way the reaction happens and the results achieved, between high voltages (say, 12v, even 30v ), and the lower voltages (say, 4-5v?). Also, does the current drawn make a huge difference? As mentioned before, the power supply I'm using limits the current to 333mA. Thanks in advance, and please do let me know if the 30v 333mA PS particularly unsafe.. I'd rather be told I'm naive than figure it out the hard way! (though it does seem as though the current is too weak to penetrate skin - I've only felt a shock, and a tiny one at that, if water transfers current into a wound on my finger)