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ironious

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  1. All im hearing is fear here. I was a little concerned about my constant exposure to Hg so I got tested. All normal levels. For the purpose of what I was disolving the hg, it was not nessessary to know the chemical composition. I did and still have stored it in a secure location. According the World Health Organization, elemental mercury can be swallowed with no ill effects and is harmlessly passed. Also pure Hg gas is heavier then air. You think you chemistry majors would know that. It sinks but that does not mean it cannot mis with air and become boyant. Just fyi, the Hg I was obtaining was usually heavily contaminated so I built a glass and copper water cooled mercury still. For all those saying to avoid and be scared, please put your man pants on. Reply as you wish, I wont be returning. I dont trust people who live in fear based on media fearmongering. By your reasoning, all dangeriouss chemicals should be avoided. There are chemicals that are way more toxic then hg which so happened to be used in a lot of scientific equipment for CHEMISTRY labs.
  2. Pleased dont lecture me on the dangers of mercury. Im very well aware what it is and I understand your concern. I used to have a website where I sold over a hundred pounds for years among other things, but Ive since moved on to more lucrative things. I also happen to know that elemental mercury is not as dangerous as most people think. A small amount of research will show you that. Elemental mercury can be swallowed and pass harmlessly through the digestive tract. It is a metal and is ignored by the body much like swallowing a penny. If youve been to the dentist and have a silver filling in your mouth then you have an elemental mercury amalgam in your mouth right now. The danger with Hg comes from its vapor which thank god is heavier then air and sinks to the ground in most cases assuming its not carried into the atmosphere by other things like hot smoke from say a coal burning energy plant which are responsible for thousands of tons of Hg being dumped into the air around the world each year. The vapor is also in florescent light bulbs and advertising signs among other things. And of course let us not forget the most dangerous form of Hg, organic salts which are sometimes uses as a preservative in vaccines. The stuff is all around us. This is in a labeled heavy duty thick glass bottle that originally contained 5lbs of Hg. In the "olden days" Hg came in these super thick glass bottles that were unlikely to break if dropped. It is not likely to be forgotten and dumped down the toilet ever. To answer your other question, I was coating a coper plate which I was using in gold mining. You can roll a blob of Hg on a coper plate and maybe get it to stick with great effort or you can dissolve it in HNO3 and literally paint it on. As the HNO3 attacks the copper, the Hg falls out of solution and forms an amalgam of sorts. Forgive me for being a little annoyed about your concerns. Every time I post anything anywhere on the topic of Hg, people go into fear mode and begin to warn/lecture me. I dont claim to know everything though. If I'm wrong, please correct me. I believe Hg should be respected, not feared. By the way, thank you Sensei
  3. First off I must say that I am very novis when it comes to chemistry so here I go. I dissolved some mercury in nitric acid. the mixtrue stayed clear for many days then after several weeks, I went to us some to coat a coper plate and I noticed these yello crystals in it. It also had a layer of fine powdery white crystals on the bottom of the container. Are these the same crystals and just different colors? If not what are they? I could not get an image of the white crystal powder. My camera kep focusing on the outside of the bottle. But I did get the yellow ones. see images here: http://s203.photobucket.com/user/ironious/library/crystals
  4. If someone could tell me please: What is the spike showing me? Id that what the magnetic field looks like if we could see it?
  5. What happens when you put mercury and aluminum together? I read that ist bad but as an experiment, I put a small blob of mercury on some aluminum foil and nothing happened.
  6. Hello, Im trying to make some nitric acid to recover gold from mercury. It is extremely expensive so purchasing it is out of the question. I was told that I could mix potassium nitrate into hydrochloric acid until the potassium nitrate no longer dissolves. I will be left with a nitric acid solution that I will be able to use to dissolve mercury. I can then recover the mercury by dissolving aluminum foil in it. Im just checking to make sure this information is correct. Thanks
  7. I prety much stuck to the original instructions. The stuff you are seeing spiking was made by putting the magnet next to the container, moving it around so lots of magnetite would get attracted then pulling up the side of the container then pulling the magnet away a bit so most of the fluid spilled off. I then poured off the fluid that separated. Then I took the remainder and put it in a container of its own. I repeated this process several times because each time you do it, you only get a very small amount. So what Im working with is thick stuff. Also I might mention that when boiling off the ammonia, it took a lot longer then 1 hour like the instructions said. I did it for about 2 hours and it still smells a tiny bit like ammonia. I think you might need to get most of it out to stop the precipitation. And I did find out why oleic acid was needed. Its because its not water soluble at all. for this recipe the surfactant needs to be oil soluble.
  8. Its going to flocculate some what when you add the ammonia, thats normal. If it gets rock hard then you must be doing something wrong. Try using a solution 10% ammonium hydroxide 90% water. Thats what Im using. Here's some stuff I been working on. Yup. I did that, I made homemade ferrofluid spike.
  9. They are not too pricey. I got mine on ebay for a little over 10 bucks. This is the one I got http://cgi.ebay.com/1-x-2-N45-Rare-Earth-Neodymium-NdFeB-Cylinder-Magnet_W0QQitemZ120235390316QQihZ002QQcategoryZ31485QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
  10. Im using a large neo magnet. 1" in diamiter by 2" long. My 1"x1" also works. I found that my smaller neo magnets are no good for this.
  11. Ive been letting it sit for days now but it doesnt seem to want to separate at all Does the water sink to the bottom maybe? Like I said b4, I think its the oleic acid thats making the water colloidal. Polysorbate 20 is a surfactant and it will make water and oil mix. That how they make a lot of hand creams and lotions. In all honesty though, I dont know why the water and kerosene appear to be mixing. I am just guessing. I am not a scholar, Just your average guy that thought it would be cool to make some ferro fluid. In answer to your question, just keep adding more steal wool. It takes quite a bit more then you would think. It will turn florescent green then an aqua green almost clear. Then Just pull the remainder of the steal wool out and give it a good squeeze to wring out all of the FeCl2. I kept adding small pieces but wasnt seeing hardly any change either. So I stuck a big piece in and got worried because the steal wool acted like a sponge and soaked most of it up; However the steal wool get broken down and its not too difficult to wring most of the liquid out of it. I advise adding the ammonia under a vent hood or out doors. Because as soon as I did it, huge amounts of ammonia gassed off and burned my eyes, nose, and chocked me. And I didnt even poor it in all at once! I had it in a syringe and was was adding it several drops at a time as per a similar suggestion in this thread. Good fun here! I used Janitorial strength ammonia from Ace Hardware.Its 10% ammonium hydroxide.
  12. I finished mine. When I added the ammonia it formed like a crystal or flake but from looking at the finished product, I can say that that is normal. After you boil off the ammonia it is throughly gummed into the oleic acid. When the kerosene is added, it dissolves the magnetite oleic acid solution into itself. Double filtering the finished did nothing because as far as I could see, nothing collected into the filter, If anything did collect then it was absorbed into the filter because when I was done, the filter was black. It didnt readily spike up when a megnet was placed next to it. BUT after playing with it for a while, I discovered that if you pull magnet away and fiddle with it, you can make it spike. I think the non spiking problem is because there is too much kerosene. I wasnt able to get pictures of the spikes because after I took a pictures, I didnt like them so I deleted them only to come back to find that my father had added more kerosene to the fluid with out asking me. He was thinking that it would help it spike better but now it will not spike at all. All that work and effort for nothing Ive got some sitting out in hopes that some of the kerosene will evaporate. Also I would like to note that the instructions for this are not correct. After you boil off the ammonia, all of the magnetite will sink to the bottom. Now is the time to pour off the water, before you add the kerosene because they dont separate like the instructions said. I poured off most of the water first. But not all because the instructions said they would separate. Well they don't. They do separate after playing with the ferrofluid for a while but then you have to stick a napkin in the container to soak up the beads of water. I believe the oleic acid has something to do with the water and kerosene not separating. I think a stronger magnet would work better also. Regular refrigerator magnets are worthless for this application.
  13. I got some oleic acid from ebay.Im waiting for it to arrive. You'd be amazed what you can find on ebay. There are several chemical companies that set up shop there. You can get the magnets and lots more from United Nuclear - Scientific Supplies Ive got the n45 neodymium magnets also. I dont have a lab, Im just doing this at home. I like the suggestion of running the final product through a filter 1 last time. I just hope hte filter doesnt soak up too much of the fluid though.
  14. I gotta know, did it work? Im going to make some too using oleic acid and kerosene. I thought about using polysorbate 20 because it also is a surfactant. However I was told that it would not work. Anyone know why?
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