Making Mercury - A Liquid Metal That's Very Toxic
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2024
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In this video I make the beautiful and toxic mercury metal from mercuric chloride while things don't quite go according to plan.
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0:00 Intro
0:24 What Is Mercury?
1:46 How I am Going To Make The Mercury (I kinda have no idea)
6:00 Constructing The DIY Super-Duper Mercury-Making Contraption 5000
7:40 Making Mercury (First try)
11:00 Making Mercury (Second try (actually succesful this time))
15:14 Cleaning The Mercury
17:47 Experiments With Mercury
19:46 Big Thanks To Brilliant For Sponsoring This Video!
20:41 Outro
#beautiful
#chemistry
#experiment
#interesting
#demonstration
#science
#mercury
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Also Guys, thank you very much for watching!
could you make a video on making salicylic acid from willow trees ?
@@devnitrate I will definitely make it in the future, it seems to be a quite popular topic
@@Amateur.Chemistry one last question: where do you get conc sulfuric acid in europe ? do you have to license it ?
It can be made from Aspirins (acetylsalicylic acid). Probably less work than starting from Willow wood?
I still remember the first time I held onto a bottle of mercury, the weight felt surreal despite knowing its density.
Yeah, holding a container with mercury is a pretty interesting feeling
Very interesting feeling, indeed. Seeing a few hundred kg of the stuff has a rather weird effect the brain. A few dozen 10kg containers of the stuff, thankfully stored properly in a leakproof mercury cabinet.
My science teacher used to pour it into our hands and let us play with it. This was before everyone became a huge words-I-cant-say-on-TH-cam. Inhale those vapours, it puts hair on your chest and makes a man of you!
First time I went to handle a 500 mL bottle of mercury, I tried to lift it and it just didn't work. My brain wasn't expecting the actual density.
If you ever need Mercury metal just ask Cody's Lab, dude has at least one toilet of it.
😂 ahh yes, the standard metric, toilet.
How much is one mercury toilet in bananas?
@@stuartdparnell On the cavendish scale 22
8 seconds in and i hear a falling metal pipe
i already know this video is going to be epic
My most memorable mercury experience was getting an extremely heavy gauge thing from a junk yard. When I opened it up it had a cylinder inside that was filled with about 2 quarts of mercury. Turned out the device was a pressure measuring unit for a high pressure gas line. The mercury completed circuits according to pressure. Don't make em like the used to 😂
The copper metal method did not work, because the reaction produced Copper (I) chloride on the surface of the metal, passivating the metal. Copper (I) chloride is a white-greyish powder, that is really insoluble in water, however, it is soluble in hydrochloric acid, so by adding some hydrochloric acid to your experiment, you can maybe recover the mercury. This is experimental nonetheless, as Copper (II) chloride will react with the copper metal, producing Copper (I) chloride, removing excess hydrochloric acid. You can prevent this by doing the reaction in an airtight container or in an inert atmosphere, so the oxygen from the air will not oxidize the Copper (I) chloride to the Copper (II) chloride.
Thanks for the explaination! Everything makes more sense now and in the future I will probably test out your theory :)
Like i said, before attempting to be a « chemist » learn chemistry, because one day you will make a mistake… chemistry is not something you can do as an « amateur » it’s not a game…
Now I'm starting to feel old, it was bad enough that I remember pumping leaded fuel into a car, but being told how rare mercury is nowadays when I still remember seeing thermometres and switches filled with it all the time, is really starting to send the message home that time moves fast.
6:30 FYI you can strip copper wire of insulation by the kilo in 5 minutes by letting your cables soak for like 1 night in acetone. Then a large chunk of the insulation will fall by itself or with minimal mechanical help. You'll end up with something that resembles a plate of spaghetti (the insulation bits) and a puddle of clean copper cables. That cable stripping is probably really satisfying to see on video.
Does that work with enamel coated wire? Is it actually a polymer coating? I've seen people suggest burning it off but that has never worked so well for me. I end up scraping it off with a knife. Edit: I guess I should have checked the timestamp you referenced before commenting, it's obviously the PVC coated wire.
@@igotes yes it should work with enamel coating, also with PVC (is PVC gonna release chlorine though? could be an issue).
When I scrape the enamel off for regular use (i.e. not just to recuperate the copper) I use a thin strip of very small grain sand-paper instead of a knife: take like a half a centimeter wide strip of sand-paper, fold it into two, making sandy sides touch one another, and pinch the end of your wire in that sand-paper and just give it a few turns. Works like a charm. You can also vaporize it with the soldering iron but I like that less.
Thanks for the info. I've tried with sandpaper (something like 240 grit), I use the same method as you described, I just can't get 100% of it off, which is a bit of a pain to solder. I'm working with < 1mm dia wire. I think in future I'll just get the wire without the coating :)
Actually now I think about it, the sandpaper method does work well for longer lengths, in my case I was trying to just expose a few mm from the ends of very short pieces, which made it harder to do on a large scale. But I was going about it the wrong way, bare copper is much easier, stick some kapton tape on for insulation.
So hard to listen too after a few minutes. Close captioning can be such a gift
Shaking that vial must feel great! I Mercury is such a fun element
Yeah, there is nothing else quite like it, I just wish it wasn't so toxic
@@Amateur.Chemistry Elemental Hg isn´t that bad only the vapours are but of course you know that. Gallium is boring in comparison. Elemental Hg on your bare hand feels so cold and heavy without sticking. Of course I can´t recommend doing that
Man you get better sponsors than Nile😂😂😂
Everyone on TH-cam being weird about mercury. Meanwhile I spent my childhood playing with it with bare hands.
Mercury itself isnt too bad, it's mercury salts as they are very water soluble and pass through skin easier
Awesome video, thank you for sharing your procedure!
Elemental mercury is not as toxic as people believe.
It actually is, it's very toxic. But it's fairly hard to get it into your blood stream where it'll do the damage, which makes it not too unsafe to touch.
But as stated in the video, at room temperature it slowly vaporizes and the vapor will easily get absorbed by your lungs and then be transported to all the places where it can do damage. When released into the environment, it can also be converted by specific bacteria to much more dangerous and easy to absorb compounds. I've dropped mercury on the carpeted floor in my house before. It was a total pain to clean up. Ended up ripping out part of the carpet. Every time you try to pick up a little ball of mercury, it tends to just split up in more tiny balls.
Elemental mercury vapors is not good to breathe in. And you got to take precautions to clean it up. Mercury compounds like mercury chloride (HgCl2) is much more toxic. Mercury is also bioaccumulative, making it more toxic than lead. So it would be good to replace Aluminum Mercury amalgam with Aluminum Galinstan amalgam for reductions and reductive amination. Gallium and Galinstan is non-toxic and fun to play with.
Such a bad comment and very ill informed. Also mercury is a cumulative thing so maybe the first time not a big deal but repeated exposure is an issue.
If you have a skin of impurities floating on the mercury surface (or for example glass bits if you collected it from breaking mercury switches), you can remove that using a loop of cellophane tape. The impurities will stick to the adhesive but the mercury metal won’t.
That has to be the most scientifically advanced mercury recovery copper contraption I've ever seen in my life. Amazing how far we've come as a species.
Very great video, i am intersted to see future videos with Hg.
I once had about 4 liquid oz of mercury, about 5 or 6 pounds. And I experimented with it for years, submersed my bare fingers in it countless times, I never got sick.
I can tell right away by the amount of warnings at the beginning of the video that this will be a good one!
Awesome video! Keep going!
Now make a rectal thermometer 💀💀💀
Great job 👍
You could’ve turned the mercury chloride into mercury nitrate or sulfate, and either done a single replacement with that, or thermally decomposes it into mercury oxide…
Always nice to see someone else having the balls to work with mercury. Although the metal isnt nearly as useful as the compounds this kind of process is useful for recycling mercury if you want the pure metal at the end.
I have worked in some of the largest mercury producing processes in the world (gold ore processing) and the waste gas stream was scrubbed to Mercury (II) Chloride and then Calomel for shipment to a Waste facility. Zinc Powder was used to convert the unreacted Mercury (II) Chloride into elemental Mercury which was drained out of low areas. Try using zinc in your waste solution to remove the mercury.
As much as I love mercury, I felt relieved watching this and knowing I didn't have to deal with soluble mercury salts
I am so glad to know that I’m not the only one who has gone down the mercury rabbit hole.
Intended Puns ❤ Bam! Subscribed.
D: I'm a little disappointed you didn't make mercury via neutron bombardment of gold.
Also, can't you just chuck a stoichiometric amount of NaOH in there? I think if you put too much in it forms a garbage amalgam.
Sodium hydroxide is almost always the answer lol
You're so brave!😊
Anybody knows where I can find a lab grade mercury thermometer already?
Hard AF to find and purchase.
In EU it is nearly impossible since all mercury thermometers are strictly banned, but they might sell some in the US or Canada
One experiment I've wanted to try with mercury is dissolving a small amount of aluminum and magnesium, then bubbling hydrogen into it to see if Mg(AlH4)2 precipitates on the surface. The thermodynamic data I could find says it should form, but I don't know if the kinetics work out. It's a strong reducing agent that could be useful as a hydrogen storage material. It's also reported to be pyrophoric, so that might be fun.
You could have used electrolysis, a dilute solution of HCl in which the Mercury Chloride is dissolved, electrolysis will break down both the compounds into Mercury, hydrogen and chlorine gas (that might be a lil bit of a problem) but it would work. The only downside is that you would need a platinum or mixed metal oxide electrodes, which are extremely expensive to get.
I feel like the formation of CuCl2 is just not favoured in this situation unlike the copper nitrate. Copper 2+ and nitrate ions fit well according to the theory of strong and weak lewis acids and bases which kinda defines many of these displacements.
I like your content. Yours is the mix between NileRed & NurdRage except yours is more consistent
Good video ❤❤
That Dankpods Ears on a Stand with the hungdo600 headphones intro music.
So that is chlorine gas streaming out of that beaker!!?!? You are braver than I, my friend
Seems like the easy way would be to replicate the ancient way. Mercury has been extracted from cinnabar rocks for thousands of years. Either place the cinnabar in a kiln or pulverize it in a copper mortar/pestle along with some sulphuric material and a weak acid. Viola
I remember when I studied chemistry in high school we used to use the old thermometers that contain mercury in the bulb and we were all under strict instructions to immediately evacuate the entire building if someone dropped a mercury thermometer on the floor and the thermometer broke and leaked mercury on the floor and we were not allowed to re enter the building until a hazmat team wearing protective equipment cleaned up the mercury spill and safely contained the mercury spill
I'm not chemistry expert, but I'm not completely chemistry naive. I'm wondering if maybe the copper didn't work because as soon as the mercury broke off from the molecule it then absorbed into the copper itself, amalgamating with it.
Mercury is unfortunately still popular in some areas for recovering gold from various sources. Since it's fairly specific for that purpose. Another popular toxic method involves cyanide. Which got me to wondering, could one extract gold from ewaste using a soxhlet extractor with hydrogen cyanide, since HCN condenses at such a reasonable chilling temperature. Any escaping vapor could go though a flame and be destroyed before becoming hazardous.
Yes, but will it flush?
How about making an Aluminum Galinstan amalgam and using it for reductive amination of 2-Thienylacetone with ethylamine in ethanol water solution to make Ethiopropamine.
Amazing job well done how are you
Thanks! I am great :)
Nice
I also like collecting delicious copper, except I don't do chemistry with it ;) stripping wires is definitely one of my favourite methods but, it can be quite time consuming. Stealing copper pipes from Home Depot is definitely my preferred method.
I think you should make mercury from mercuric chloride by electrolysis. The carbon anode and steel or carbon cathode may work for this
Great video, however in the begginer warning there is a typo "eaisly". Its just a small mistake however, nicely done!
This is a lot of hard work. Lazy me would have reacted the mercury chloride with alkali and decomposed the resulting oxide in a distillation setup. I know, the risk of mercury fumes leaking exists, but with strong enough cooling and good ventilation, it should be fine.
The risk here is not elemental mercury. The risk is contamination with mercury(II) chloride. A tiny crystal the size of ant's antenna will do orders of magnitude more damage than some vapors of the element.
I recently spilled some mercury from a thermometet in a cabinet.
I completely lost a sample between 4 and 5x your final yield there, several years ago, into carpet, off the coffee table.
I can attest it turns into tiny beads, a few of which stuck to carpet fibers, but by far the most notable thing was that it instantly disappeared down into the carpet.
It was never seen or heard from again in the time I lived there.
Having played with it extensively prior to this, it's amusing to see all the paranoia about it now. Any effects from just messing with it for a bit here and there, as well as exposure to vapor for a few years... minimal.
It's a shame it has been banished into almost non existence... the stuff is a lot of fun to play with indeed.
You're right tho. Get away from the metal and things do get a bit scary.
I currently have a selection of 3 large mercury switches with a total of about your yield there... I occasionally take them out to play with them but it stays in the sealed switches.
I figure probably not a great idea to push my luck 🤣
You think it's fine living in a home that has a constantly high concentration of mercury vapors? You'll stop thinking it's funny when tremors start as you get older.
@@lajoswinkler The ship sailed. No tremors. But what else you got? 🙄
Great video!
Thanks!
Hi, what gas mask are you using, i am also doing some chem and i dont really know what to look for. Can i get any recommendations?
Uhhhhh...
You would want to use "MP - 5 Gas mask" It's designed to protect against chemical weapons and such, so it will do, they need to have filters exchanged every month or so, but it's rather cheap, so it will keep you safe if you use it correctly.
A gas mask would be good for mercury metal and stuff like Benzyl Chloride, Ethylamine, and maybe Thiophene and formaldehyde and HCl gas. But using Aluminum Galinstan amalgam would be better than using Aluminum Mercury amalgam since it's non-toxic and you won't end up consuming Mercuric Chloride (HgCl2). Eating or breathing in small amounts of Aluminum and Galinstan and Ethylamine and 2-Thienylacetone and certain other chemicals is fine, though not recommended. It would be good to use Aluminum Galinstan amalgam to reduce the imine of 2-Thienylacetone and Ethylamine in ethanol water solution to Ethiopropamine. Then you bubble some HCl gas through it to get the HCl salt of Ethiopropamine. Aluminum Galinstan amalgam is the non-toxic alternative to Aluminum Mercury amalgam. Some chemical reactions should be performed outside or in a fume hood. Wear gloves and a lab coat and goggles and sometimes a gas mask. Gallium alloys are so safe, I ate a drop of Galinstan like twice in my life. Nothing happened.
Even though I knew the density is high, it felt still so odd when I first time held a 1 liter container of mercury.
YOOOOOOOOO MY MAN IS A MAN OF CULTURE
The zinc on the steel can will form an amalgam with Mercury.
Hello ever heard of mercury fulminate? It appear on Breaking Bad!
I think there might be an electric potential issue with the copper method. Maybe grounding or providing a voltage might get it moving?
i think its oxide passivation
You cannot make mercury, unless you are a neutron star merging with another neutron star.
The best you could do is refine the metalic form of mercury from mercuric sulphide ore (cinnabar ore) by heating the ore to +540º C.
You can make elemental mercury and in the context of chemistry, when we say mercury, we think about the elemental substance.
No, you do not refine/extract an element from a compound. You _isolate_ it.
Refining and extracting means removal from a mixture. HgCl2 is not a mixture.
When i was a kid they'd put mercerechrome on cuts an abrasions all the time...
Red it was...
Is that's what is used in skin whitening ?
Can you make mercury-chrome ?
Can anyone tell me
The red mercury in those mirror to tests where it disappears is that mercury-chrome/ate
Good work up
Your a very smart gentleman!
Extracting mercury is not one of the easiest things to do. Unless you regularly work around toxic chemicals, it's not worth the trouble really. You might do it as a project, but if you need it, just get the pure element.
This is not extraction, but isolation. We extract parts from a mixture. We isolate elemental substances from chemical compounds.
Cool
Maybe try electrolysis with your waste =) Carbon anode and steel cathode should work =)
Personally, I would just have made a mercury chloride solution with water, and kept it cool probably with an ice bath, this is for 2 reasons, firstly I don't know the exothermic nature of the following reaction, and secondly, if this makes mercury as I want it to, then it will likely be dispersed in the solution, and I don't want any to dissolve in the water, (though the solubility is low already) colder water renders mercury almost entirely insoluble. then I would add a non-halogenated alkali-metal/alkaline-earth-metal compound, preferably somewhat water soluble, such as calcium hydroxide, sodium hydroxide and their respective carbonates. (calcium carbonate and hydroxide are essentially insoluble in water, but they display retrograde solubility, meaning that they dissolve easier in cold water) if the strong basic nature and high ph of the hydroxides interferes with the reaction, then use the carbonates instead. I would avoid using bicarbonates because that would evolve excessive CO2. I think I would pick sodium carbonate as my first option, mostly because calcium chloride is annoying to deal with, and sodium carbonate is not as caustic as lye.
the reaction is as follows: HgCl2 + Na2CO3 = 2NaCl + Hg + CO3 I don't know if the mercury will form a carbonate at these conditions or not. the idea is that since its such an unreactive metal, it would just ignore the CO3 ions, and they would bubble off to produce CO2 gas and oxygen. it may form mercury oxide though, but whatever it forms, it should decompose when sufficiently heated.
alternatively, like in the video, you can add a piece of a more reactive metal to the solution, such as copper or aluminum to form their respective chlorides, and metallic mercury. this could contaminate the mercury metal with other metals and form an amalgam though, which is why I mentioned this method second. the advantage with aluminum is that the mercury will not only amalgamate with it, but it will also break apart the protective oxide coating naturally found on the aluminum and prevent it from forming again, which means the highly reactive aluminum can directly react with the water and form aluminum hydroxide which is insoluble in mercury, which means that the mercury will be left on its own. disclaimer: I am by no means a professional chemist, I just do it as a hobby.
Cesium and rubidium are only liquid at room temperature if they are contaminated.
A mogłeś zrobić to tak. rozpuszczasz HgCl2 w 5%HCl. Wkładasz elektrodę wolframową (do TIG) podłączasz ja do minusa, oraz grafitową (do plusa). puszczasz prąd (koniecznie zasilacz stabilizowany.. Oczywiście odprowadzenie chloru. rtęć kapie na dno....
I once got some mercury chloride solution in my eyes.
How do you feel about the fact that the sponsor of the channel is a company that clearly produces substrates for drug production?
I find that kind of weird, at the time I partnered with them they sold a lot
of more normal chemicals, but I guess I have no control over what they choose to sell. Anyway just a few more videos and we will part ways
@@Amateur.Chemistry ok, thanks for the answer
Could you not just decompose the mercury chloride with heat, and vent the chlorine to the atmosphere?
You can make mercury , from mercury chloride on reduction with stannous chloride or hydrazine hydrate , or ading nitric acid in mercury chloride solution and after reduce with copper , or reacting with sodium hydroxide , when you obtain mercuryc oxide , disolving in nitric acid and after reduction with copper. If your mercury solution contain excess of copper nitrate hard to remove , you need to used ammoniacal solution or hot solution of ammonium carbonate an washing very well with watter and yield it is very good.From yor waste mercury can recovery in this mode : first ading in liquid waste , sodium hydroxide in portinos to make aprox.28 % concentration with formation soluble sodium hydroxide aluminate ( ading more much sodium hydroxide generate insoluble product) residuale waste washing with watter and reacting with nitric acid , to form mercury nitrate. Success.
It's very strange, your sponsor, BM chemistry, only sells strange chemical reagents which are mainly used to manufacture narcotics like P2NP (Phenyl 2-nitropropene which is one or two step away to amphetamine) or propiophenone and its derivatives which are precursors to cathinones and ephedrine compounds. All of which are on international watchlists lol.
I also find that kind of weird, at the time I partnered with them they sold a lot
of more normal chemicals, but I guess I have no control over what they choose to sell. Anyway just a few more videos and we will part ways
@@Amateur.Chemistry Yes I was expecting normal chemicals (or at least exotic ones) but maybe is it a bait to attract drug manufacturers to get on a watchlist lmao
I think you need a supernova to make marcury
This is nile red but slightly more chaotic lol
And the best part, he makes videos :D
@@janeiro301 hahaha lol
You don’t actually MAKE mercury, I call it isolating mercury. Or reduce the salt to the metal.
You could have reduce the aluminum to potassium aluminate
Why do you want make pharaon's serpent from mercury, having soluble salt of it?
Gallium is way cooler (despite being slightly warmer in it's liquid form), it's non-toxic for a start and it does awesome things to Aluminium.
Mercury does even more amazing things to aluminum and is much prettier, so in my opinion its better than gallium, but I understand that for some gallium may be better
Cinnabar and mercury are amazing and beautiful, they are not the problem, humans just need to figure out how to control ourselves on the massive scale that we do everything else.
I am curious if you are using a positive air flow with filtered clean air intakes out away from the room and vent? It might sound like overkill but it is easier to breath and much safer than relying on a filter and seal.
Red Mercury? Or Radium?
Not to be that guy, but unless you got a star on hand, you're actually extracting and refining Mercury.
Doesn't the mercury chloride absorb straight through nitrile gloves?(!)
I don't think so, mecuric chloride is quite non-polar and a solid, but something like dimethylmercury sure can
@@Amateur.Chemistry Ahh I must've gotten my mercury compounds mixed up
No one is making Mercury.... Did you meaning extracting?
milamin from uree🎉
They are still filling teeth with mercury amalgams after so many people got sick from them?
You hardly had any mercury chloride in solution
I bought some on eBay for cheap lol
You should make fulminate.
I plan to do that in the future :)
powdered aluminum would likely do better
Yeah, if I had some I would probably used it but it just so happened that I ran ot
Puré ist? Non tóxico
1:02 bro the most stable isotope of francium has an half-life of 22minutes max (dont read this comment with an angry voice , i'm not (angry))
What language is this?
That's a yikes from me
You keep using those nitrile gloves with nitric acid. Didn't you say that was unwise?
Yeah, I just forgot to take them off here, fortunately dilute nitric acid doesn't react with them nearly as fast as the concentrated stuff
mercury is not toxic..
Yes it is
Bruh that accent 😅
Bruh thats what i thought
Why the silly accent?
The voiceover grates on me. Sorry bro but you really need to work on your voiceover. I stopped the video at 1:59 because I had had enough of it. Your video content is great but the voiceover is really irritating.
If you don't like the video then don't watch it instead of complaining, I try as hard as I can to make my english sound better and I am aware that its still far from perfect.
@@Amateur.Chemistry It's not the English bro its your undulating tone. You could be speaking in Russian and it would still sound as grating. If you try keeping yor tone level and as you would normally speak.
@@Amateur.Chemistry i really find your voice nice and relaxing and i think must of us do
Don't listen to that fool. Your English/voice is fine. Keep up the good work.
@zalzalahbuyysaab reading your comment was really grating on me. Only made it to the part where you said 'you need to work on' and had already had enough. Your spelling and grammar are great, but your choices of expression just felt really unnecessary and obnoxious.
Cesium and rubidium are only liquid at room temperature if they are contaminated.
You don’t actually MAKE mercury, I call it isolating mercury. Or reduce the salt to the metal.