Great helpful video. When I tried this initially it did not work, the reaction would not start. I tried different peroxide types, different nickel sources. Then in one comment it was mentioned that the nickel strips must be completely clean. After cleaning the nickel with acetone and alcohol this worked as the video shows.
Excellent video! As a new analyst working in the battery space, I have been curious in how this process is carried out. You really showed in a simple way how easy it is to make NiSO4.
I’m in the same boat but thought you can just use nickel anode I’m in cathode. Current and it will make a solution. Then after a day. You remove negative/cathode insert item being plated with negative attached and positive anode still in with positive. Then plating happens? Why does a full solution need to be pre made? Is it better plating. Thicker, brighter? Total cost 20 for anodes, 10 for wire and alligator clamps salt sealed container.
You can also drive the reaction forward with electricity. Place 2 nickel strips in the sulfuric acid solution. There is no need for hydrogen peroxide. You can connect low voltage AC directly to the 2 strips. You can rgulate reaction rate with current, so "run away" will not happen. Electrolysis will etch & plate nickel, with net reaction of nickel sulfate being made. Boil down solution & when cooled, nickel sulfate will crystallize. You should not skip this step as the crystallization purifies the product. BEWARE! A lot of the "nickel" strips are nickel-plated steel.
Let's plate something with this Nickel Sulfate! You can also get Muriatic(hydrochloric) acid pretty cheaply as most big box home stores and I'm sure NiCl2 would work for electroplating as well. And just a bit of nitpicking here, but those are probably NiSO4(H2O)6 and not NiSO4. Great job, none the less and keep up the good work. Or better yet, if you have some iron around, screw the electroplating and make some iron-nickel magnetic particles.
Helo hmx. I got muriatic acid 20% concentration. So, with 12 grams of nickel... How many milliliters of Muriatic should I use? I would greatly appreciate your knowledge!
@@ivanbutorovich619 The reaction is similar to one shown at 1:29 in the video. You have Ni(s) + 2HCl(aq) ⇨ NiCl2(aq) + H2(g) So you will need at least 2 moles of HCl per mole of Nickel. At 20%, you have ~20g HCl per 100 mL(or grams) of solution. This should equate to a molarity of 6.02 moles/L of HCl (the density of HCl solutions varies with concentration). Nickel is 58.69 g/mol and HCl is 36.46 g/mol. 12g/58.69g/mol is 0.204 moles of Nickel so you need 0.408 moles of HCl. We will round this up to at least 0.5 moles of HCl to ensure that Nickel is the limiting reagent. So 0.5 moles HCl / 6.02 moles HCl/L = 83 mL 20% muriatic acid. So if you use 100mL of Muriatic acid, you should be able to completely covert the full 12g of nickel to NiCl2.
Just found this channel. Great job. Any chance you can tell me how to dilute the solution to use for nickel plating? If I follow your directions exactly, could I then dilute by 3 parts water to 1 part nickel solution and use that for plating? Looking forward to other videos.
Nice video. I've been collecting the nickel strips from old battery packs before sending the batteries for recycling. It's one way to get some nickel for free. Of course, I still need to buy some nickel too.
Hydrogen peroxide is not react with nickel directly, it first reaction with sulfuric acid, forming peroxymonosulfuric acid. Being a strong oxidizer, it can directly oxdize nickel to nickel sulfate.
Beautiful video! It is also possible to use atmospheric oxygen to oxidize the nickel, but the process is incredibly slow--I got a few grams of nickel salts after sitting in acid for about six months. I need to try using an air bubbler setup to see if I can speed that up; I was concerned about managing the resulting corrosive mist of metal and acid.
I have already managed twice to break down nickel sulfate at 120°C into nickel monoxide (light green powder that is not water soluble) and sulfur trioxide even though it was still in an aqueous solution. Does anyone understand this? Because nickel sulfate only breaks down at 840°C, which is what you read everywhere.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll try and incorporate more safety topics in future videos. Even though the solution was heated by the exothermic reaction it never reached boiling temperatures and I have no reason to think any of it got airborne.
Not to mention that most nickel compounds are suspected carcinogens - search for MSDS + the name of the chemical before trying TH-cam chemistry. What are your plans for disposal when you no longer wish to use the chemicals you have created?
mine also remained very acidic, I wonder if it is necessary to neutralize the solution before recrystallizing, which is not mentioned in the video, the point is that if it remained acidic it means that there is potentially still sulfuric acid in the solution and I fear that when crystallizing, a by-product is formed which pollutes the purity of the crystals
Great video, good science ! Do you know what the advantages vs disadvantages to using acetate vs sulphate for plating. Crystals are awesome regardless I'm gonna do this experiment...... evaporation is incredibly slow here 3 miles inland and in the deep south low. humidity threshold is 69% lol but those are jaguar green crystals and an awesome distraction from my prime goal.
The presence of sulpahtes doesnt have much of an effect on the electroplating. Your question is a bit flawed as well. For nickel acetate the acetic acid provides the low pH needed for plating and also works to break down oxidized nickel into nickel ions. The comparable ingredient in say a watts plating bath is boric acid which is used as an acidic pH buffer. Using nickel sulphate therefore is just a means to get the bulk of initial nickel ions into solution. Then as pH slowly rises from hydrogen gas formation there is small amounts of sulphuric acid added to lower the pH back down.
@@GarageScience Thanks GS, I just see a big majority of folks who are using the nickel acetate, I am assuming because it's simple and easy, and not too intimidating chemicals. Making this is more involved, so I assumed that it may have an advantage over the acetate. Besides the cool crystals option. I guess I figured the sulfuric acid was providing the low Ph and the boric acid was some catalyst or smoother. Thanks again, this helps me a lot, I really like to understand the reactions I attempt before I invest into a proper setup.
@@GarageScience uh, I'm sorry if I'm being dence, but if watts solution uses the boric acid to increase the conductivity and the sulfuric acid is just for the initial breakdown of nickel into solution, why do we use sulfuric to modulate the PH creeping up? What would be the effect if we used more boric acid, or say acetic or phosphoric. Just pondering what can be achieved and looking for unseen pitfalls, I don't expect you to know the full extent of those questions, but I'd like to hear ×hat you have learned about this aspect. THANKS AGAIN for taking the time to share your experiences.
i dont mean to be offtopic but does any of you know a method to get back into an instagram account..? I was dumb lost the account password. I would love any help you can give me.
@Martin Jackson I really appreciate your reply. I found the site thru google and im waiting for the hacking stuff atm. Seems to take a while so I will reply here later with my results.
@@Jbogator oh good lord. No. I haven't messed with that in a couple of years and don't recall what I did in the end,, haven't had the chance. Will be this summer though.
A typical watts plating bath has a nickel content of about 0.3mol/liter. My experiment produces a concentration of about 0.5mol/liter. Dilute with about 240ml of water to achieve 0.3mol/liter concentration.
Tryed myself , Resulted in a bit of pure nichel sulphate Chrystals, but at the end obtained a lot of yellowish sludge. The Chrystals at the end are not even obtainable as theyr consistency is needle gel/like. I can assure you by the appearance even the Chrystals obtained in your video are not pure blue, they seem more yellowish/ greenish than they should be. Whats the problem? Too much sulfuric acid resulting in sulfuric sludge? Spent a lot of efforts trying to obtain Chrystals from the last 2/3 of solution. Still no results.
It might. You can also make iron sulphate by repeatedly dipping iron into copper sulphate and the exchange reaction will cause iron to go into solution and copper to deposit on the iron. But this is laborious and probably ends with Cu contaminants in your iron sulphate.
I was thinking about a way of getting rid of the water by increasing the surface area. How about a wide shallow glass container submerged in a near Boling water bath? What do you think? Is only water leaving the solution or do I need to think about ventilation?
That would also work. I thought about doing that but didn't want to sacrifice one of my wife's cooking dishes haha. It is only water evaporating so no worries about other harmful chemicals.
I even put the nickel in straight battery acid for a whole day and they did NOTHING!! You said it would be violent in straight battery acid, mine didn't even dissolve.
It has to be heated if it's in straight battery acid... heated with a burner, or stove or something like that... this is potentially very dangerous (hot battery acid in your eyes is basically instantaneous blindness), any particular reason you're trying to get a violent reaction with sulphuric acid?
Yes it will. You may have to change the ratio that I use in the video and increase your acid amount by a proportional amount. You'll also end up with more water to evaporate at the end.
@@GarageScience thanks, I think I've got the calculations figured out. I'll be using it for electroplating. According to my calculations I'll even need to dilute it by 50%
Technically no but for the purposes of this experiment they basically are. The hexahydrate indicates that for each nickel sulphate there are 6 water molecules crystalized with it. This is a pretty standard form to buy nickel sulphate but you can also get it in its dehydrated form. The biggest thing is to account for the water weight from the hexahydrate when measuring out chemicals for a solution.
Can the solution be boiled in a container directly over a heat source rather than using the double boil method? Won't this speed up the evaporation of water in order to form NiSO4 crystals?
Yes it would. My own experience with this approach has been that the combination of boiling with an acidic solution has caused even stainless steel pots to corrode. I've actually had holes created in the pot and had boiling hot acid spilled all over the place. Thankfully I was using a hot plate in the center of my garage floor so there were no injuries or damage but still a mess. I wouldn't recommend that approach.
I tried making this for nickel plating and since you don't say how much to dilute the solution I diluted it 50/50 with distilled water and it still disolved the part I was trying to plate. Am I doing something wrong here?
So if you use this to plate directly you may have an issue because without some special tools it will be tough to know how much acid is left over in the solution. That's why it's a little simpler if you form the crystals and redissolve them in distilled water so you know there is little to no acid present. Did you add additional acid like I show in my nickel plating video?
I did exactly as the video suggests and although it is kinda working, it's been 24 n my 14g of nickel is no where close to being dissolved. I got the sulfuric acid from auto parts store and is identical to the one in the video, numbers n all. I'm assuming my sulfuric acid wasn't concentrated considering container was full and it's not required to add water? Edit: The Nickel I'm using is solid @ 99.6%.
Sorry for the late reply, did you add the hydrogen peroxide? The sulfuric acid by itself although it will react without the hydrogen peroxide it will be a very slow reaction. Also need to make sure your nickel is clean. Any oil on the surface will prevent the reaction from taking place.
No worries on how long it took to reply.. After leaving my last comment I ran into Someone else in here who had the same issue using a solid piece of nickel So I ordered nickel strips and they dissolved perfectly fine. I thought I had the wrong concentration of sulfuric acid but in the end it all worked out.
So I tried this same experiment with the exception that I doubled the ingredients (600ml Hyd Peroxide, 170ml sulfuric acid and 6 99%Canadian nickels = 25 grams) and the solution hasn't completely dissolved as of 48 hours later. Is that normal and shouldn't this work just as well?
Are the nickels potentially plated with something and were they thoroughly cleaned before hand? Even a very small layer of grease gunk or oil can prevent a reaction.
Thanks for your excellent job, Really mean it! Is there any difference by using sulfuric acid at 98%? All your videos show car battery acid that is around 35%, here impossible to find, I can get only 98%, so any difference? Cause I dont have any skill in chemistry I prefere to ask even silly question that end up in a disaster..... Once the solution is ready, without turn it in crystals, could you please repeat how to mix it: with what, distilled water? Which average % Thanks so much
Hey now, part of being a garage scientist is learning a new thing every now and then. There are plenty of resources out there on how to properly dilute a solution. Go read around, you don't need me to be your calculator.
Could you pleast at list tell me if, with your formula and sulfuric acid at 98%, the proportion between oxigen peroxyde and sulf acid remain the same? Thanks so much!
It would take a very long time to react the exact amount of hydrogen peroxide with sulfuric acid. The ratios I provided in the video over supply hydrogen peroxide since it will naturally decompose over time. So any leftovers will eventually go away. Whereas if there is left over acid it give your nickel sulfate an acidic pH.... so short answer is that yes the ratios in the video can be maintained and still work at different reactant concentrations (ie. You'll need about 1/3 the amount sulfuric acid).
There isn't a way to control pH. The experiment focus is on making nickel sulphate crystals. The pH will naturally start very acidic and moderate as the acid gets used in the reaction. The final solution is still very acidic though.
I have used nickel nuggets that average 45g 25x25x6mm the reaction is not as vigorous but it is continuing on a heat plate at 150f. I DON'T KNOW how to calculate the mol. I have 800ml of 35% sulfuric +800 ml 12% (40volume) peroxide. I added excess nickel (450gram) but do not know how to calculate the theoretical saturation amount of nickel. I will weigh the undisolved nuggets when they stop reacting. But what should I expect?
If I understand your recipe, it was 85ml of 35% acid 300ml of 3% peroxide and 12 grams nickel.. scaling up the 4x higher concentration peroxide gives me 75ml close enough I used 1:1 acid peroxide. Initially adding 113 grams of nickel, after the reaction showed to be contained (with less surface area) I added the rest of a ~pound 500gr. The solution, 36hrs later is very dark nearly the color of the crystals. Sitting on a heated pad @60c it builds up a cloudy precipitation around the nuggets on the bottom that dissolve back to a clear when stirred. Can you tell me what the theoretical saturation is and what mol. Thanks bro your video is the only decent resource for Nickel sulphate and I suspect it is superior to the acetate in performance since it is what industry uses.
That's a bit of a complicated calculation to explain in the youtube comments... there's lots of resource online on how to calculate saturation concentrations. The reaction would have been slower due to a lower surface area. I had the same white mist.... not actually sure what it is.
My distilled vinegar diy nickel sulfate electrolyte solution is brownish and foggy and ideas what I did wrong I'm using the same nickel strips you have and I read to use distilled vinegar only low voltage and a day later I got brownish white water very cloudy
Are you using the nickel strips for both electrodes? If not you could be introducing contaminants. Vinegar is acetic acid and has somewhat of a complicated structure compared to sulfuric acid. It's possible the vinegar is breaking down into other organic components. Those would be my first two points of investigation. Try vinegar and mix in hydrogen peroxide to break down the nickel, then you won't have to use electricity. The hydrogen peroxide will oxidize the nickel and the acid will strip away the nickel oxide into solution to make your electrolyte. Also, with vinegar as your acid you'll have a nickel acetate solution not nickel sulfate.
@@GarageScience ok yes I was using the nickel for both positive and negative the negative was black and looked nothing like nickel plating, I didn't know that I was making nickel acetate instead of nickel sulfate I will research to see what the difference is I'm definitely interested in electroplating, I am trying to electroplate my rc car drive shafts and other metal pieces any suggestions for the beginner?
My advice is watch my other videos ;). I've got some good ones on copper plating and nickel plating. If you don't want to use sulfuric acid to make nickel sulfate you can fork out a little extra money and just buy the nickel sulfate outright. The amount you need to do nickel plating in a Mason jar isn't too expensive.
This totally did NOT work for me. It won't finish the process. Been trying for 2-3 days and still have the same nickel strips after running them through the solution twice.....
Was your hydrogen peroxide new or old? Hydrogen Peroxide has a shelf life due to its natural decomposition. Are you using the exact solution in my video or are the ratios/concentrations different?
Yes it would be, and technically it would probably be better than what I've made in the video... not sure what the purity of my nickel sulphate is but it probably isn't 99%.
@@GarageScience but i mean without peroxide you know? edit: i once dissolved an iron nail in a jar in 10% sulfuric in a few weeks it was so beautiful bubbles all the time and blue color
@@GarageScience Even though I followed the video carefully 3 times, I didn't get when it was said that the final product was 300 grams. It seems impossible to me to obtain such a quantity starting from 12 grams of metal. I start by saying that I know little about both chemistry and maths, but if the moles per liter of the final liquid are around 0.5, considering that nickel sulphate hexahydrate has a value of 262.85 g/mol and that the volume of the liquid will be approximately 386 ml , something around 50 grams of crystals should be reasonable (I repeat, I'm not a mathematician), so I really don't get why 300 grams. By side, seems that almost every solution of hydrogen peroxide even at 3% always comes with that damn stabylizer. Still good for this experiment?
Each bottle made used 12 grams, I made multiple bottles though and evaporated quite a bit of water. There was also un crystallized solution left in the evaporating jar. There's too many variables at play here to get a straight calculation. Perhaps I wasn't clear about that in the video.
@@BillFromTheHill100 Mole or mol means molecule. 1 mol = 6.023x 10²³ particles or atoms present in the element which is the Avogadro's number. One uses mols/liter because you are creating a solution using a solute and solvent. Any molecule or chemical compound has a certain molecular mass, expressed as gram/mol, which is a standarized chemistry unit as per universally agreed convention of chemists. To prepare a desired concentration of the solution, you take the mass of the solvent (here in this case, concentrated sulfuric acid) and compare it with the molecular mass of solvent (which is sum of atomic masses of the individual elements). The ratio gives you the "number of moles" present in weight of the chemical compound/solute(sufluric acid). The number of moles is then dissolved into desired volume of solution (usually water..0.5 liter or 1 liter as desired). The resulting value of the concentration is expressed in mol/liter. It is much more accurate than expressing in terms of w/v% or v/v% because we know that weight or mass of chemical compounds are not all the same. @Garage Science: Please confirm 😃
Can confirm 👍, we'll stated. I tried to provide the resulting concentration for this recipe so that if someone changes it they could easily calculate the new concentration.
you can also use Nickelcarbonate (from pottery supply, its used for glazes) and add the respective acid like sulfuric, =nickelsulfate, Hydrochloric=Nickelchloride , Acetic=Nickelacetate. The reaction only gives off CO2 gas. Add slowly to prevent from foaming up due to CO2 evolution.
@@GarageScience i am not in the US, over here its 40-50€/kg. a quick google turned up that, maybe thats helpful: www.theceramicshop.com/product/16682/nickel-carbonate-1-4-lb/ ("currently out of stock", but decent price, maybe ask when the restock?)
Garage Science Add a miscible organic solvent to the solution such that the salt precipitates “crashes” out of solution. It might partition, it might not, you also won’t get pretty crystals but it might well enable you to recover the bulk of your stuff. I might try it with ACN and see what happens.
Garage Science Maybe what you could do is add some ethanol, the wiki for NiSSO4 says it is not soluble in that. Might be expensive for garage chemistry and, like I said, it might partition instead of precipitate. I might try just to see what happens! I just got some nickel sheets in today in fact. I might substitute ethanol or methanol to save cost too. Who knows!
@@GarageScience I know this is 2y after the fact, _and_ I'm not educated on the matter... However, I've heard the term used before somewhere, and "crash" means to invoke the nickle into precipitating out of the solution, which happens instantly as soon as the substance is added to the aqueous NiSO4 solutiom. I believe it's termed this, on account of it crashing with... the metal ions (?)... and "knocking" it out of solution instantly. Though in not sure if it is implied due to technical reasons, like molecules literally crashing into each other, causing the precipitation; or just symbolically, resembling shattered glass falling about in a car accident. 🥴🤷♂️
"The Hydrogen Peroxide is what makes the Sulfuric acid safe." I had to pause and check that this wasn't an April Fools video. That mixture is called Piranha solution for... reasons. Those reasons are only safe in that the name serves as a warning.
Great helpful video. When I tried this initially it did not work, the reaction would not start. I tried different peroxide types, different nickel sources. Then in one comment it was mentioned that the nickel strips must be completely clean. After cleaning the nickel with acetone and alcohol this worked as the video shows.
Excellent video! As a new analyst working in the battery space, I have been curious in how this process is carried out. You really showed in a simple way how easy it is to make NiSO4.
Battery acid is not concentrated not even close. How ever this is a good thing for most people who will use this as a guide. Good video by the way
Very smart and cheap solution to use the nickel strip as a source
Fantastic! I was running over budget with my copper playing experiment. This will save it!
I’m in the same boat but thought you can just use nickel anode I’m in cathode. Current and it will make a solution. Then after a day. You remove negative/cathode insert item being plated with negative attached and positive anode still in with positive. Then plating happens? Why does a full solution need to be pre made? Is it better plating. Thicker, brighter? Total cost 20 for anodes, 10 for wire and alligator clamps salt sealed container.
You can also drive the reaction forward with electricity. Place 2 nickel strips in the sulfuric acid solution. There is no need for hydrogen peroxide. You can connect low voltage AC directly to the 2 strips. You can rgulate reaction rate with current, so "run away" will not happen. Electrolysis will etch & plate nickel, with net reaction of nickel sulfate being made. Boil down solution & when cooled, nickel sulfate will crystallize. You should not skip this step as the crystallization purifies the product.
BEWARE! A lot of the "nickel" strips are nickel-plated steel.
Thank you very helpful and explained very well
Let's plate something with this Nickel Sulfate! You can also get Muriatic(hydrochloric) acid pretty cheaply as most big box home stores and I'm sure NiCl2 would work for electroplating as well. And just a bit of nitpicking here, but those are probably NiSO4(H2O)6 and not NiSO4. Great job, none the less and keep up the good work. Or better yet, if you have some iron around, screw the electroplating and make some iron-nickel magnetic particles.
Helo hmx. I got muriatic acid 20% concentration. So, with 12 grams of nickel... How many milliliters of Muriatic should I use?
I would greatly appreciate your knowledge!
@@ivanbutorovich619 The reaction is similar to one shown at 1:29 in the video. You have
Ni(s) + 2HCl(aq) ⇨ NiCl2(aq) + H2(g)
So you will need at least 2 moles of HCl per mole of Nickel. At 20%, you have ~20g HCl per 100 mL(or grams) of solution. This should equate to a molarity of 6.02 moles/L of HCl (the density of HCl solutions varies with concentration). Nickel is 58.69 g/mol and HCl is 36.46 g/mol. 12g/58.69g/mol is 0.204 moles of Nickel so you need 0.408 moles of HCl. We will round this up to at least 0.5 moles of HCl to ensure that Nickel is the limiting reagent. So 0.5 moles HCl / 6.02 moles HCl/L = 83 mL 20% muriatic acid.
So if you use 100mL of Muriatic acid, you should be able to completely covert the full 12g of nickel to NiCl2.
@@bipolarchemist I'm very grateful for you answer! :)
Awesome video. Great job explaining too!
Just found this channel. Great job. Any chance you can tell me how to dilute the solution to use for nickel plating? If I follow your directions exactly, could I then dilute by 3 parts water to 1 part nickel solution and use that for plating? Looking forward to other videos.
Can you please explain the process of dilution for Nickle plating as mentioned in the video
I would like to know this too.
Awesome info very clear and easy to understand
Thanks for the video, I've shared it with my students 😊
Nice video. I've been collecting the nickel strips from old battery packs before sending the batteries for recycling. It's one way to get some nickel for free. Of course, I still need to buy some nickel too.
Great video!! Interesting looking crystals.
Just put it outside in the sun and a fan keeping air moving over the surface, couple days will reduce volume quit a bit
Hydrogen peroxide is not react with nickel directly, it first reaction with sulfuric acid, forming peroxymonosulfuric acid. Being a strong oxidizer, it can directly oxdize nickel to nickel sulfate.
and peroxymonosulphuric acid is really safe LOL
Good for pointing that out
I'm ON IT!
Would love to see how to iron plate, can save a few of my soldering iron tips that way. Iron, then nickel over the upper parts of the tip.
Beautiful video! It is also possible to use atmospheric oxygen to oxidize the nickel, but the process is incredibly slow--I got a few grams of nickel salts after sitting in acid for about six months. I need to try using an air bubbler setup to see if I can speed that up; I was concerned about managing the resulting corrosive mist of metal and acid.
I have already managed twice to break down nickel sulfate at 120°C into nickel monoxide (light green powder that is not water soluble) and sulfur trioxide even though it was still in an aqueous solution. Does anyone understand this? Because nickel sulfate only breaks down at 840°C, which is what you read everywhere.
VERY INFORMATIVE
Thank you
For higher concentration H2O2 that is pure, buy “food grade”
Yeah, the only peroxide without stabylizer. In fact the stabylizer Is even in the 3% solutions. However stabylized 3% for me worked well
There is no mention of nickel sulfate being toxic and dangerous to breath when heated up. I wish the video covered some of the safety parts.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll try and incorporate more safety topics in future videos. Even though the solution was heated by the exothermic reaction it never reached boiling temperatures and I have no reason to think any of it got airborne.
Not to mention that most nickel compounds are suspected carcinogens - search for MSDS + the name of the chemical before trying TH-cam chemistry. What are your plans for disposal when you no longer wish to use the chemicals you have created?
what was the pH after the nickel metal dissolved? I suspect the bulk of the sulfuric acid is left over and does not react.
Mine was approx 1... according to litmus paper test. I'm currently trying to figure out how to dilute into suitable plating solution.
mine also remained very acidic, I wonder if it is necessary to neutralize the solution before recrystallizing, which is not mentioned in the video, the point is that if it remained acidic it means that there is potentially still sulfuric acid in the solution and I fear that when crystallizing, a by-product is formed which pollutes the purity of the crystals
Great video, good science ! Do you know what the advantages vs disadvantages to using acetate vs sulphate for plating. Crystals are awesome regardless I'm gonna do this experiment...... evaporation is incredibly slow here 3 miles inland and in the deep south low. humidity threshold is 69% lol but those are jaguar green crystals and an awesome distraction from my prime goal.
The presence of sulpahtes doesnt have much of an effect on the electroplating. Your question is a bit flawed as well. For nickel acetate the acetic acid provides the low pH needed for plating and also works to break down oxidized nickel into nickel ions. The comparable ingredient in say a watts plating bath is boric acid which is used as an acidic pH buffer. Using nickel sulphate therefore is just a means to get the bulk of initial nickel ions into solution. Then as pH slowly rises from hydrogen gas formation there is small amounts of sulphuric acid added to lower the pH back down.
@@GarageScience Thanks GS, I just see a big majority of folks who are using the nickel acetate, I am assuming because it's simple and easy, and not too intimidating chemicals. Making this is more involved, so I assumed that it may have an advantage over the acetate. Besides the cool crystals option. I guess I figured the sulfuric acid was providing the low Ph and the boric acid was some catalyst or smoother. Thanks again, this helps me a lot, I really like to understand the reactions I attempt before I invest into a proper setup.
@@GarageScience uh, I'm sorry if I'm being dence, but if watts solution uses the boric acid to increase the conductivity and the sulfuric acid is just for the initial breakdown of nickel into solution, why do we use sulfuric to modulate the PH creeping up? What would be the effect if we used more boric acid, or say acetic or phosphoric. Just pondering what can be achieved and looking for unseen pitfalls, I don't expect you to know the full extent of those questions, but I'd like to hear ×hat you have learned about this aspect. THANKS AGAIN for taking the time to share your experiences.
Great Job!
This makes 0.5m/L so what is good for plating then?
Great video Thanks
Nice video, subscribed!
Happy to have you!
Do you know a boiler for H2SO4+H2O2 solution under high pressure? (For example: 316Ti or others)
Great video..would love to see step by step electroless nickle plating..with chemicals used
i dont mean to be offtopic but does any of you know a method to get back into an instagram account..?
I was dumb lost the account password. I would love any help you can give me.
@Gordon Payton Instablaster :)
@Martin Jackson I really appreciate your reply. I found the site thru google and im waiting for the hacking stuff atm.
Seems to take a while so I will reply here later with my results.
@Martin Jackson It worked and I now got access to my account again. Im so happy!
Thanks so much you really help me out!
@Gordon Payton You are welcome :D
Wait, wait. Aren't you making piranha solution mixing hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid?
If you're doing plating what's the dilution ratio you use?
Did you ever find the answer to this?
@@Jbogator oh good lord. No. I haven't messed with that in a couple of years and don't recall what I did in the end,, haven't had the chance. Will be this summer though.
@@CDale-tc3xz ok thanks.
I'm trying to find the answer as well.
How much dilution for plating types of steel or metals ahead of copper plating?
A typical watts plating bath has a nickel content of about 0.3mol/liter. My experiment produces a concentration of about 0.5mol/liter. Dilute with about 240ml of water to achieve 0.3mol/liter concentration.
Nice video. Subscribed :)
Needed Nickel Sulfate to make lungs when reacted with PCP and Rhodium
Mình pha với dung dịch gì để mạ niken vậy bạn cám ơn bạn
Sir can you make video on nickel silicon carbide electro plating on aluminium.
how much yield u got of nickel sulfate out of consuming 12 grams of nickel ?
thank you
how can you use it to electroplate the nickel to a brass object?
If you started with 12 grams of nickel I wonder what's the total weight of the final product considering that chrystals are esahydrate,
normally 20% is nickel
Tryed myself , Resulted in a bit of pure nichel sulphate Chrystals, but at the end obtained a lot of yellowish sludge. The Chrystals at the end are not even obtainable as theyr consistency is needle gel/like. I can assure you by the appearance even the Chrystals obtained in your video are not pure blue, they seem more yellowish/ greenish than they should be.
Whats the problem? Too much sulfuric acid resulting in sulfuric sludge?
Spent a lot of efforts trying to obtain Chrystals from the last 2/3 of solution. Still no results.
Nickel Sulfate is naturally green. If you're getting blue or yellow anything you probably have a contaminate getting mixed in.
amzn.to/3voZrIn
So Nickel Sulfate will simply dissolve again if put back into water or does it require the peroxide again too?
It's a salt just like the sodium chloride in your table salt. So yes it will dissolve again in water. It'll a few minutes but it'll dissolve.
What else would you need to create an Edison battery?
Would this work also for preparing iron sulfate from stainless steel pins or mesh?
It might. You can also make iron sulphate by repeatedly dipping iron into copper sulphate and the exchange reaction will cause iron to go into solution and copper to deposit on the iron. But this is laborious and probably ends with Cu contaminants in your iron sulphate.
we cannot buy nickel sulphate crystals in UK :(
Now you know how to make it 😏
@@GarageScience yes thanks so much XD
Nice vid.
I was thinking about a way of getting rid of the water by increasing the surface area. How about a wide shallow glass container submerged in a near Boling water bath? What do you think? Is only water leaving the solution or do I need to think about ventilation?
That would also work. I thought about doing that but didn't want to sacrifice one of my wife's cooking dishes haha. It is only water evaporating so no worries about other harmful chemicals.
@@GarageScience did you consider a water distiller? I have one that takes 4 liters. It finishes in about 7 hrs....
Way to go :)
I even put the nickel in straight battery acid for a whole day and they did NOTHING!! You said it would be violent in straight battery acid, mine didn't even dissolve.
It has to be heated if it's in straight battery acid... heated with a burner, or stove or something like that... this is potentially very dangerous (hot battery acid in your eyes is basically instantaneous blindness), any particular reason you're trying to get a violent reaction with sulphuric acid?
How can I make regular nickel solution "bright"?
Would a 15% battery acid concentration be enough? Due to regulations I can't buy a more concentrated solution
Yes it will. You may have to change the ratio that I use in the video and increase your acid amount by a proportional amount. You'll also end up with more water to evaporate at the end.
@@GarageScience thanks, I think I've got the calculations figured out. I'll be using it for electroplating. According to my calculations I'll even need to dilute it by 50%
I recommend diluting after reacting the nickel.
Can i make the solution with the leftover material during nickle process...
Pls guide me
Nickel plating solution? Yes you can. You have to dilute and add a couple other chemicals, I made a video on how to do this.
@@GarageScience ok
Is nickel sulfate and nickel sulfate hexahydrate the same thing?
Technically no but for the purposes of this experiment they basically are. The hexahydrate indicates that for each nickel sulphate there are 6 water molecules crystalized with it. This is a pretty standard form to buy nickel sulphate but you can also get it in its dehydrated form. The biggest thing is to account for the water weight from the hexahydrate when measuring out chemicals for a solution.
NiO plus sulphuric acid? Interesting. Acetic acid doesn't react with NiO.
Can the solution be boiled in a container directly over a heat source rather than using the double boil method? Won't this speed up the evaporation of water in order to form NiSO4 crystals?
Yes it would. My own experience with this approach has been that the combination of boiling with an acidic solution has caused even stainless steel pots to corrode. I've actually had holes created in the pot and had boiling hot acid spilled all over the place. Thankfully I was using a hot plate in the center of my garage floor so there were no injuries or damage but still a mess. I wouldn't recommend that approach.
@@GarageScience What are your thoughts about boiling the solution in a glass beaker?
I tried making this for nickel plating and since you don't say how much to dilute the solution I diluted it 50/50 with distilled water and it still disolved the part I was trying to plate. Am I doing something wrong here?
So if you use this to plate directly you may have an issue because without some special tools it will be tough to know how much acid is left over in the solution. That's why it's a little simpler if you form the crystals and redissolve them in distilled water so you know there is little to no acid present. Did you add additional acid like I show in my nickel plating video?
I did exactly as the video suggests and although it is kinda working, it's been 24 n my 14g of nickel is no where close to being dissolved. I got the sulfuric acid from auto parts store and is identical to the one in the video, numbers n all. I'm assuming my sulfuric acid wasn't concentrated considering container was full and it's not required to add water?
Edit:
The Nickel I'm using is solid @ 99.6%.
Sorry for the late reply, did you add the hydrogen peroxide? The sulfuric acid by itself although it will react without the hydrogen peroxide it will be a very slow reaction. Also need to make sure your nickel is clean. Any oil on the surface will prevent the reaction from taking place.
No worries on how long it took to reply..
After leaving my last comment I ran into Someone else in here who had the same issue using a solid piece of nickel
So I ordered nickel strips and they dissolved perfectly fine.
I thought I had the wrong concentration of sulfuric acid but in the end it all worked out.
So I tried this same experiment with the exception that I doubled the ingredients (600ml Hyd Peroxide, 170ml sulfuric acid and 6 99%Canadian nickels = 25 grams) and the solution hasn't completely dissolved as of 48 hours later. Is that normal and shouldn't this work just as well?
Are the nickels potentially plated with something and were they thoroughly cleaned before hand? Even a very small layer of grease gunk or oil can prevent a reaction.
@@GarageScience Canadian nickels from 1955 - 1981 are 99.9% nickel.. and I didn't clean them beforehand.
I recommend cleaning with baking soda, a little water and a scrubbing pad.
@@GarageScience ok. There is some reaction happening, just not entirely.
Thanks for your excellent job,
Really mean it!
Is there any difference by using sulfuric acid at 98%? All your videos show car battery acid that is around 35%, here impossible to find, I can get only 98%, so any difference? Cause I dont have any skill in chemistry I prefere to ask even silly question that end up in a disaster.....
Once the solution is ready, without turn it in crystals, could you please repeat how to mix it: with what, distilled water? Which average %
Thanks so much
Hey now, part of being a garage scientist is learning a new thing every now and then. There are plenty of resources out there on how to properly dilute a solution. Go read around, you don't need me to be your calculator.
Also, I'm very glad you're enjoying my content 😊.
Also, I'm very glad you're enjoying my content 😊.
Could you pleast at list tell me if, with your formula and sulfuric acid at 98%, the proportion between oxigen peroxyde and sulf acid remain the same?
Thanks so much!
It would take a very long time to react the exact amount of hydrogen peroxide with sulfuric acid. The ratios I provided in the video over supply hydrogen peroxide since it will naturally decompose over time. So any leftovers will eventually go away. Whereas if there is left over acid it give your nickel sulfate an acidic pH.... so short answer is that yes the ratios in the video can be maintained and still work at different reactant concentrations (ie. You'll need about 1/3 the amount sulfuric acid).
How to control ph .
There isn't a way to control pH. The experiment focus is on making nickel sulphate crystals. The pH will naturally start very acidic and moderate as the acid gets used in the reaction. The final solution is still very acidic though.
I have used nickel nuggets that average 45g 25x25x6mm the reaction is not as vigorous but it is continuing on a heat plate at 150f. I DON'T KNOW how to calculate the mol. I have 800ml of 35% sulfuric +800 ml 12% (40volume) peroxide. I added excess nickel (450gram) but do not know how to calculate the theoretical saturation amount of nickel. I will weigh the undisolved nuggets when they stop reacting. But what should I expect?
If I understand your recipe, it was 85ml of 35% acid 300ml of 3% peroxide and 12 grams nickel.. scaling up the 4x higher concentration peroxide gives me 75ml close enough I used 1:1 acid peroxide. Initially adding 113 grams of nickel, after the reaction showed to be contained (with less surface area) I added the rest of a ~pound 500gr. The solution, 36hrs later is very dark nearly the color of the crystals. Sitting on a heated pad @60c it builds up a cloudy precipitation around the nuggets on the bottom that dissolve back to a clear when stirred. Can you tell me what the theoretical saturation is and what mol. Thanks bro your video is the only decent resource for Nickel sulphate and I suspect it is superior to the acetate in performance since it is what industry uses.
That's a bit of a complicated calculation to explain in the youtube comments... there's lots of resource online on how to calculate saturation concentrations. The reaction would have been slower due to a lower surface area. I had the same white mist.... not actually sure what it is.
Yay!
My distilled vinegar diy nickel sulfate electrolyte solution is brownish and foggy and ideas what I did wrong I'm using the same nickel strips you have and I read to use distilled vinegar only low voltage and a day later I got brownish white water very cloudy
Are you using the nickel strips for both electrodes? If not you could be introducing contaminants. Vinegar is acetic acid and has somewhat of a complicated structure compared to sulfuric acid. It's possible the vinegar is breaking down into other organic components. Those would be my first two points of investigation. Try vinegar and mix in hydrogen peroxide to break down the nickel, then you won't have to use electricity. The hydrogen peroxide will oxidize the nickel and the acid will strip away the nickel oxide into solution to make your electrolyte. Also, with vinegar as your acid you'll have a nickel acetate solution not nickel sulfate.
@@GarageScience ok yes I was using the nickel for both positive and negative the negative was black and looked nothing like nickel plating, I didn't know that I was making nickel acetate instead of nickel sulfate I will research to see what the difference is I'm definitely interested in electroplating, I am trying to electroplate my rc car drive shafts and other metal pieces any suggestions for the beginner?
My advice is watch my other videos ;). I've got some good ones on copper plating and nickel plating. If you don't want to use sulfuric acid to make nickel sulfate you can fork out a little extra money and just buy the nickel sulfate outright. The amount you need to do nickel plating in a Mason jar isn't too expensive.
This totally did NOT work for me. It won't finish the process. Been trying for 2-3 days and still have the same nickel strips after running them through the solution twice.....
Was your hydrogen peroxide new or old? Hydrogen Peroxide has a shelf life due to its natural decomposition. Are you using the exact solution in my video or are the ratios/concentrations different?
i found nickel sulphate hexadhyrate %99(chem pure) on a store..is it proper for nickel plating
Yes it would be, and technically it would probably be better than what I've made in the video... not sure what the purity of my nickel sulphate is but it probably isn't 99%.
@@GarageScience can i use nickel sulphte hexahydrate for electroless nickel plating. what else will i need for electroless plating?
how long would it take to dissolve at room temp?
i mean without peroxide
It's not much more time. Maybe an additional 15min. It's not truly necessary to heat the water it just makes it a little easier.
@@GarageScience but i mean without peroxide you know?
edit: i once dissolved an iron nail in a jar in 10% sulfuric in a few weeks it was so beautiful bubbles all the time and blue color
It would probably take weeks. From what I observed after several days there was no noticeable reaction taking place.
@@GarageScience i will get back to you in a few monthes
That's not concentrated sulfuric acid. Concentrated is 98% and will eat through things with ease. You have probably around 50%.
Are you sure you produced 300 grams of NiSO4 and not 30 grams?
Yes I sure. It was weighed with a scale. I definitely wasn't off by an order of magnitude.
@@GarageScience The reason I ask is because when I do the math I get 30g. Did you ever try to do the math? Would you like to see my math?
@@GarageScience Even though I followed the video carefully 3 times, I didn't get when it was said that the final product was 300 grams. It seems impossible to me to obtain such a quantity starting from 12 grams of metal. I start by saying that I know little about both chemistry and maths, but if the moles per liter of the final liquid are around 0.5, considering that nickel sulphate hexahydrate has a value of 262.85 g/mol and that the volume of the liquid will be approximately 386 ml , something around 50 grams of crystals should be reasonable (I repeat, I'm not a mathematician), so I really don't get why 300 grams.
By side, seems that almost every solution of hydrogen peroxide even at 3% always comes with that damn stabylizer. Still good for this experiment?
Each bottle made used 12 grams, I made multiple bottles though and evaporated quite a bit of water. There was also un crystallized solution left in the evaporating jar. There's too many variables at play here to get a straight calculation. Perhaps I wasn't clear about that in the video.
4 mols per liter...what the hell does that mean?
It's chemistry stuff. It's related to the concentration of a chemical in a solution.
@@GarageScience well that explains everything.
% would have been nice.
Unfortunately chemistry isn't that simple lol.
@@BillFromTheHill100 Mole or mol means molecule. 1 mol = 6.023x 10²³ particles or atoms present in the element which is the Avogadro's number. One uses mols/liter because you are creating a solution using a solute and solvent. Any molecule or chemical compound has a certain molecular mass, expressed as gram/mol, which is a standarized chemistry unit as per universally agreed convention of chemists.
To prepare a desired concentration of the solution, you take the mass of the solvent (here in this case, concentrated sulfuric acid) and compare it with the molecular mass of solvent (which is sum of atomic masses of the individual elements). The ratio gives you the "number of moles" present in weight of the chemical compound/solute(sufluric acid). The number of moles is then dissolved into desired volume of solution (usually water..0.5 liter or 1 liter as desired). The resulting value of the concentration is expressed in mol/liter. It is much more accurate than expressing in terms of w/v% or v/v% because we know that weight or mass of chemical compounds are not all the same. @Garage Science: Please confirm 😃
Can confirm 👍, we'll stated. I tried to provide the resulting concentration for this recipe so that if someone changes it they could easily calculate the new concentration.
you can also use Nickelcarbonate (from pottery supply, its used for glazes) and add the respective acid like sulfuric, =nickelsulfate, Hydrochloric=Nickelchloride , Acetic=Nickelacetate. The reaction only gives off CO2 gas. Add slowly to prevent from foaming up due to CO2 evolution.
Do you have a source for the nickel carbonate? Everywhere I look it is pretty expensive :/
@@GarageScience i am not in the US, over here its 40-50€/kg. a quick google turned up that, maybe thats helpful: www.theceramicshop.com/product/16682/nickel-carbonate-1-4-lb/ ("currently out of stock", but decent price, maybe ask when the restock?)
Why not crash it out of solution before drying.
Not familiar with "crash it out of solution" in terms of chemistry processes, could you elaborate please?
Garage Science Add a miscible organic solvent to the solution such that the salt precipitates “crashes” out of solution. It might partition, it might not, you also won’t get pretty crystals but it might well enable you to recover the bulk of your stuff. I might try it with ACN and see what happens.
Garage Science Maybe what you could do is add some ethanol, the wiki for NiSSO4 says it is not soluble in that. Might be expensive for garage chemistry and, like I said, it might partition instead of precipitate. I might try just to see what happens! I just got some nickel sheets in today in fact. I might substitute ethanol or methanol to save cost too. Who knows!
@@GarageScience I know this is 2y after the fact, _and_ I'm not educated on the matter...
However, I've heard the term used before somewhere, and "crash" means to invoke the nickle into precipitating out of the solution, which happens instantly as soon as the substance is added to the aqueous NiSO4 solutiom.
I believe it's termed this, on account of it crashing with... the metal ions (?)... and "knocking" it out of solution instantly.
Though in not sure if it is implied due to technical reasons, like molecules literally crashing into each other, causing the precipitation; or just symbolically, resembling shattered glass falling about in a car accident. 🥴🤷♂️
"The Hydrogen Peroxide is what makes the Sulfuric acid safe." I had to pause and check that this wasn't an April Fools video. That mixture is called Piranha solution for... reasons. Those reasons are only safe in that the name serves as a warning.
I would say context is key for that one but I see where you're coming from.
free science lessons music
nickelsulfate
This is exactly what Elon Musk talked about
Useless.
good helth