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Strange acid test results


Kurious12

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Have an odd piece of pyrite that I was doing some acid testing on, and I've gotten some really strange acid test results. I purchased some other pyrite so I could compare note and the results are a world apart. There is no way I can explain what I saw with words, but I do have pictures, so would it be cool to post and share them on here?

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5 hours ago, Kurious12 said:

Have an odd piece of pyrite that I was doing some acid testing on, and I've gotten some really strange acid test results. I purchased some other pyrite so I could compare note and the results are a world apart. There is no way I can explain what I saw with words, but I do have pictures, so would it be cool to post and share them on here?

We would an accompanying description: a picture on its own wouldn't tell us much. What acid(s) did you react it with?

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6 hours ago, Kurious12 said:

some really strange acid test results.

Agree with exchemist. Yes description in words would be great, and also numbers if you measured any, inlcuding timescale for any reactions observed.

The picture might tell us if there were other (carbonaceous) materials present that would have reacted strongly and quickly with the acid, fizzing.

Edited by studiot
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In this first test I placed a small amount of pyrite in a spoon and heated it on a stove. I got a blue flame and was left with a small amount of reddish material. I placed the reddish material on a slide and added a couple of drops of hydrochloric acid and saw no immediate reaction. When I looked at the solution about an hour later, I saw several tiny, transparent-like flakes. It was 24 hours later before I checked on it again and saw a lot of things that I have no ideal as to what I was looking at.  Photo #1 shows reddish material in acid, photo #2 shows the tiny flakes and the rest shows what happened after 24 hours. I've done a number of acid test on this pyrite and even when you crush it and add acid, there is no fizz, it just creates bubbles, some rise to the top but most will just sink to the bottom of the solutions.

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2 hours ago, Kurious12 said:

In this first test I placed a small amount of pyrite in a spoon and heated it on a stove. I got a blue flame and was left with a small amount of reddish material. I placed the reddish material on a slide and added a couple of drops of hydrochloric acid and saw no immediate reaction. When I looked at the solution about an hour later, I saw several tiny, transparent-like flakes. It was 24 hours later before I checked on it again and saw a lot of things that I have no ideal as to what I was looking at.  Photo #1 shows reddish material in acid, photo #2 shows the tiny flakes and the rest shows what happened after 24 hours. I've done a number of acid test on this pyrite and even when you crush it and add acid, there is no fizz, it just creates bubbles, some rise to the top but most will just sink to the bottom of the solutions.

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The blue flame sounds to me like sulphur burning. I think if you heat pyrite (FeS2) you will drive off sulphur and form FeS and then in the presence of air probably you will get iron oxides. If you add HCl you will get chlorides, which can look pale green. I suspect your first picture, after addition of acid, could be a mixture of oxides and/or hydroxides of iron plus chlorides, hence the red/brown and greenish crystals.

The later pictures seem to show crystal growth - rather nice dendritic growth in some of the pics. 

Would that make sense of what you saw? 

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On 5/16/2022 at 1:38 AM, exchemist said:

Would that make sense of what you saw?

I'm no scientist but what you're saying does appear to agree with what I was seeing, and I do think that you're on to something with the dendrites, I have seen them in a number of tests. In the photos below, I crushed a small amount of the pyrite, placed it on a slide and added two drops of HCI and then placed the slide in a warm oven for about ten minutes. I also did the same test but did not place it in an oven and also got loads of dendrite crystals. I have done this same test with other pyrite, and I get nothing close to these results at all.

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26 minutes ago, Kurious12 said:

I'm no scientist but what you're saying does appear to agree with what I was seeing, and I do think that you're on to something with the dendrites, I have seen them in a number of tests. In the photos below, I crushed a small amount of the pyrite, placed it on a slide and added two drops of HCI and then placed the slide in a warm oven for about ten minutes. I also did the same test but did not place it in an oven and also got loads of dendrite crystals. I have done this same test with other pyrite, and I get nothing close to these results at all.

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Very pretty pictures.

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On 5/17/2022 at 10:35 PM, exchemist said:

Very pretty pictures.

Yeah, they are pretty, thanks. I had a lady try to buy some of these photos, she wanted to have posters made for her son's room, I ended up giving her about 20 photos. 

In the photos below, like above, I just crushed a small amount of pyrite and instead of placing it in an oven, I just let it run its course in a bowl at room temperature and 2 days later this is what was seen on the slide. Those structures in photos 4&5 have been found inside of crystals that I have crushed, I have no ideas as to what these things are, I agree, they look like tiny plants but why would an organic precipitate out of a pyrite acid solution? I don't want to sit here and waste space and time with a host of odd photos so this will be the last but hopefully this helps to show how strange this pyrite is, and I can assure you that it gets much stranger than this. 

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