Potassium Metal From Potash
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- čas přidán 29. 03. 2024
- In this video I show how potash or potassium carbonate is transformed into potassium metal. The process in relatively simple in theory: Magnesium metal is used as a reducing agent and the following reaction will occur:
K2CO3 + 3Mg -- 2K + C + 3 MgO.
After the reaction is done the metal can be distilled, yielding pure potassium metal.
In pratice this took a couple of trials to get the conditions right and my most succesfull attempt yet is demonstrated in this video. The plan is to later scale this up, so we can build an intergalactic potassium metal empire.
Thanks to Advanced Tinkering for filming this video and providing the necessary equipment. You can find his channel here: / @advancedtinkering
Here is my previous video on making potassium metal, that is also quoted in this video:
• Potassium Metal from P... - Věda a technologie
![[Vowel]물고기는 물에서 살아야 해🐟🤣Fish have to live in the water #funny](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3G9MH063Cx4/mqdefault.jpg)
Acidic rain: *exist*
Elias: - hold my beer
I would scale this up a lot to help against acid rain haha :D
better clean your labstand
I have more important things to do :P
Lets make this comment blow up!
Please don't :3
And thus the Streisand effect was put into motion...
We'll see haha :D
5:35 I did not expect this bomb to burst into mineral oil farts. The fact that nobody laughed makes it even funnier.
Lol not really our kind of humor I guess :D
6:33 That sound is too relateable 😂
Haha that's how these things usually go :D
Couldn't stop laughing at the final KOH Mg test, now THAT is some real science! The only annoying thing is that magnesium turnings aren't terribly cheap either, but at least they're available at lower prices than potassium metal.
Haha, glad you enjoyed that! :D Magnesium turnings are soooo much cheaper for me then potassium metal. Like two orders of magnitude cheaper.
If you can find a machine shop in your area that works on magnesium you can get turnings for very cheap or even for free.
@@EliasExperiments fascinating chemistry video excellent quality sir very well done keep up the good work
Thank you so much!
@@EliasExperiments I live in South Australia it's completely legal to buy small amounts of potassium metal online here (no more than one container that contains no more than 100 grams of potassium) but as you pointed out in this video potassium is very expensive to buy
Nurdrage was doing a similar process for sodium, creating the metal by first reducing a salt with magnesium, however he eventually moved on to doing it in mineral oil with a tertiary alcohol catalyst. I don't know if the yields would be better, but I would guess you will lose a lot less material to the incineration process. While his video is mostly directed at using sodium, there is a similar method for doing potassium using a different catalyst. It also seems that reducing the potash from KCO3 to KO or KOH by heating would also improve yield. Still, this looks like the fun way to do it.
By far his most in-depth series ever, and I loved every second of it!
Yes I have seen Nurdrages series and it was amazing. You can probably achieve better yields with his process, but it is also very difficult to scale up, which is what we are trying to do here.
Reducing K2CO3 to KO or KOH by heating to improve the yield is more or less impossible for practical reasons. There is no way you can easily get K2CO3 this hot that it will decompose.
NurdRage also made potassium metal with this process a long time ago (and that was the inspiration for doing the same with sodium), but the video was unlisted for some reason.
Yeah I saw that too, I hope he picks the series back up with potassium metal, that would be incredibly amazing.
Yeah I saw that too, I hope he picks the series back up, that would be incredibly amazing :D
He’s active!
Oh I am so glad to hear from you! ;-)
Potassium is a strange metal and the release from its compounds is most fascinating. I couldn´t believe that you put your hand in NaK. Many thanks for sharing with us.
I wondered about that as well as touching the metal with the bare hand (the oxide coating may protect it but the potassium hydroxide formed with moister is corrosive). May this is akin to people walk on fire embers.
Thank you very much for your kind feedback! I made an entire video about putting my hand in it, you can find it on my channel. ;-)
Yes, touching potassium metal is actually similar to walking on fire ambers. If you don't touch it very long and clean your hand afterwards you will most likely be fine.
He did not literally touch it. Hand was covered in oil.
@@lajoswinkler That´s the magician´s stunt.
I've seen a lot of crazy things in my life but one I never imagined was metal being distilled. Color me impressed.
Haha, thank you for the kind feedback ;-)
With the copious amounts of obvious dangers you've presented, I'm rather offended that I didn't receive an invite.
If you would have asked I would have invited you. Next time you can join us :D
bro putting his hand in NaK like its water 😂😂
I am a little bit more careful with NaK actually :D
Making some explosive metal with dangerous methods? You got my view + like.
Haha, thank you!
Fantastic, i had been wondering about using a carbonate, that ending was awsome to.
Glad you enjoyed it, thank you for the feedback! ;-)
Great video! I had a lot of fun that day!
But I can't believe how many of the comments approve of your dirty lab stand :D
I had a lot of fun too. Haha the lab stand sparked some interesting discussions :D
very cool appreciate your time and effort.
Thank you for the kind feedback! ;-)
Great video. Keep up the cool experiments!
Thanks, will do!
@@EliasExperiments How about making and experimenting with hydroiodic acid?
Sounds interesting. Maybe, if I find a good use for it ;-)
@@EliasExperiments I hope so. I'm very curious aboud HI acid because there is little info about it. On the the sciencemadness wiki it's described as:
"one of the strongest mineral acids"
" very strong, corrosive acid."
"the most elusive hydrohalic acid"
I would love to see reactions with Al, Fe and chicken bone.
WOW !!!! I very much Liked this video .
Thank You .
Thank you for the kind feedback! ;-)
That sound is unforgettable.
Lol
The bowel movements of this set up are also richtig geil.
Lol haha yeah angry growling pump XD
really nice process!
Thank you!
Great video
Thanks!
One has to admire your passion to a lab experiment 👏 A seldom property even in the academic world.
Thank you for the kind feedback ;-)
That was really cool.
Thank you!
That's a nice lab stand
Lol, thank you :D
This is an excellent result. Potassium hydroxide might be better, but its problem is that it melts a lot easier (leading to loss of intimate mixing) and has a lot more water inside, so the extra yield might just be gobbled down.
I suggest getting a small tank of argon and keeping things far from any air. Well done.
Thank you! I have tried it with potassium hydroxide and you can see the results at the end of this video. It burns way to violently for it to be useful. I store my K under kerosene for now and it seems fine.
Next video you can show us your fire extinguishers.
Haha I actually do have two :D
Sweet!
Thank you!
Dr. Strangelove and rocket engines. Good times!
Thanks for the interesting video.
Lol thank you for the kind feedback :D
Ihr wahnsinnigen 😁, super!
Haha, danke Dir!
freakin' cool fireworks at the end!
Thank you!
You can use KCl instead of K2CO3. One thing that is created using carbonate is magnesium carbide. It will react similar to calcium carbide but generates methane.
Not correct. The reaction releases propyne.
No you can't actually substitute K2CO3 for KCl. You need far higher temperatures for KCl and Mg to react and at those temperatures both substances already start to evaporate. I could not obtain useful amounts of potassium with that reaction. Magnesium Carbide sounds interesting, I never thought about that forming during this reaction.
@@EliasExperiments How do you find out the necessary temperature for such a reaction? Speaking of chlorides, Mg will react with SrCl2*6H2O.
It is quite simple, you mix the reagents together and see what happens when you heat them up :D
10:13 nice rocket fire test!
Haha, thank you!
Ihr hättet fast die Hecke abgefackelt! 😂 Nicht gut! Die war so trocken, die hättet Ihr nicht mehr aufhalten können!
Das war mitten im Winter und quasi Dauerregen. Da wäre nichts gebrannt, wenn ich die 10 Minuten mit einem Flammenwerfer behandelt hätte.
The KOH plus Mg made a pretty good rocket. Flames 25 feet high or more. Impressive.
Yes indeed :D
Great work! I might've missed it, but if you're going to distill it off anyway, why not simply use potassium chloride? It seems to be easier to obtain (as non-sodium salt in many stores) and I don't think it has the same fiery initial reaction.
Thank you! I did not want to go into detail about this in this video, because most people would probably find that boring. I tried to use KCl and Mg, but I never obtained a useful amount of potassium. You need much higher temperatures for this reaction to work and at these temperatures the KCl and Mg start to distill too. So you would need a colum to distill it, which is not really pratical for at home purposes :D
@@EliasExperimentsThis is very interesting, I wish you had included it since already people are suggesting it in the comments.
Fine I will include it in my upcoming video where we scale this up.
60% is really good, best I've got is around 30% on a small scale run using KOH and Al powder
I actually tried to repeat your video on a larger scale and it blew up on me under vacuum. I wish I had filmed that, but I am afraid the KOH + Al Method doesn't scale too well.
@@EliasExperiments Damn that's a shame, good to know though, I guess it's not a reaction you can control very easily
Yeah good to know and I would not recommend repeating that :D
Awesome
Thanks
The labstand looks fine
I agree!
Your neighbors must love you.😆
They don't haha
"It just shows that I'm working."
Is a mentality that I stand by but my boss hates.
Lol I admit that it isn't the best excuse always :D
Finally someone talks about the reaction of Mg and carbonates. I always wondered what the products were. Does magnesium free other metals from their carbonates as well? Metals like Li, Sr, Ba, Cs.
I found out that Ti reacts with carbonates as well, does it free the metals in the carbonate?
With the Ti you would have to test it, but it is also more expensive then Mg, so the motivation to try it is rather low.
Nice!
Thanks!
Sehr nice! 👍
Danke! ;-)
You have the correct accent for this job !!! ;)
Lol, thank you!
0:03 Does the NaOH crust not hurt your fingers or does it just not dissolve enough?
It is such a small amount covered in oil, it really is not a problem if I wash my hands directly afterwards.
Hey Elias, I have a random question, other than thy labs and advanced tinkering, have you collaborated with any other channels?
I have helped the Pain Rankers make a video with Devils Toothpaste and I have talked with sciencebob about giant elephants toothpaste experiments. I have helped Explosions&Fire ship a package from europe to australia and I have gotten help from NurdRage concerning a nafion membrane. Also Chemiolis has helped me with thumbnail design on this video. There are probably some more I have forgotten and I would certainly like to do a lot more collaborations in the future.
@@EliasExperiments ok, thanks. 👍
Hey Elias, even though I still haven't gotten around to making videos yet, its funny to see that we are both working on a similar reaction! I'm using sodium carbonate and aluminum instead in an attempt to make sodium metal. I believe it should work even better with molten NaOH and aluminum, which I will try next, and which was also the original reason that I looked into this reaction to begin with. It would also be easier to do on a large scale unlike the magnesium and potassium hydroxide reaction since the reaction eith aluminum should be less exothermic according to the enthalpy equation. After looking into it for a while, I found that the key behind the success of these somewhat counterintuitive reactions is quite interesting, and quite simple, it's the fact that the metal reducing agent (magnesium in your case) wants oxygen _really_ badly, and more importantly, it wants it even more than the potassium does, which you would normally think would be the more reactive metal here. After a lot of research and equation building, and enthalpy calculations, I've found that metals in the alkaline earth group and metals in the 3B column (which includes lanthanides and actinides as well as scandium and yttrium) also love oxygen to a similar extent. it seems that 2-3 valence electrons is the sweet spot for forming happy stable oxides, additionally I found that 1-2 valence electrons is the sweet spot for halides, or at least chlorides. it seems that a near 1-1 ratio of metal to oxidizer or even a 1-1 ratio of cation to anion is the most stable configuration. With this knowledge it makes sense to hunt for another such "oxygen loving" metal in the 3A column (which is similar to the 3B column) and if you look, it does, it has aluminum, and as you would expect its very reactive toward oxygen, and prefers oxygen over a halide such as chlorine or bromine. I'm pretty sure that this concept can be expanded to other areas of chemistry and to other compounds and other reactions as well. To sum it up in anthropomorphic terminology, metals have preferences over which oxidizer they hang around with, and specifically, they like ones that are the exact opposite of themselves, like sodium and chlorine or magnesium and oxygen. I like to think of it like oxygen is simply a better fit for magnesium than for potassium, and the potassium is essentially still waiting for a proper fit (a halide) to come along and satisfy it, to make a more permanent solution for the potassium than the oxygen.
Anyway, if you look into the enthalpy calculations, the reaction of aluminum, magnesium and most of the other metals mentioned earlier, with oxygen, produces significantly more energy _per bond_ than potassium or sodium does with oxygen per bond, so there is a net enthalpy gain from swapping the oxygen from the potassium or sodium to the other metal. It's honestly a lot like thermite. Also, it doesn't seem to matter that much if it's a hydroxide or carbonate instead of an oxide since all the metals mentioned so far are significantly more reactive than hydrogen and carbon, and would easily rip the oxygen from either carbon dioxide or water, and metal hydroxides and carbonates are stoichiometrically the same as the respective oxide plus water or CO2. Anyway, I guess the lesson to learn here is that potassium/sodium and other alkaline metals aren't necessarily always the most reactive metals, they're just more reactive with halides (and probably a few other oxidizers too) than magnesium or aluminum, but magnesium and aluminum can actually be _more_ reactive than potassium or sodium in a few situations, with a few select oxidizers, namely oxygen. Anyway, this was quite long, mostly because I found this very interesting when I first learned about it, (for science!). Anyway, if you are interested in what I've been up to or want more information about the enthalpy changes in the reactions, or other possible reactions and equations of this same type, then just ask and I'll see if I can find where I wrote them down...
Another great video as always! -MetalMaster
I would guess that sodium carbonate an aluminium is too unreactive of a combination, so I would not expect this to work. But I have been wrong about things like this before. NaOH and Al might work, it might also blow up on you :D KOH and Al blew up on me und vacuum, so it might be a similar story with NaOH.
That is very interesting about the compound stabilities.
Thank you so much for this very detailed explanation.
A couple people have asked me about more in depth theory behind this reaction and from now on I will direct them to your comment, if I get asked.
@@EliasExperiments Thanks! and I guess I will have to test these reactions to know for sure. :)
5:37
Now that's a brown note
Haha :D
Hervorragend !!! schoen gemacht. Mg brennt u. scheudert seine Elektronen mit 'n kraft.
Danke, ja das stimmt ;-)
where did you get your stainless to glass coupling?
It is basically a regular KF25 flange. The metal you can buy the glass you can buy to or make it yourself as Advanced Tinkering demonstrated on his channel.
Very interesting video. If your stove were bigger, could you then use the 100g of each?
The plan is to scale this up in an upcoming video.
I love his accent. Strangely sounds like Inspector Clouseau.
Lol I have been told that a couple of times :D
So how much did it cost to make this potassium compared to buying it? Just the consumables, some of the equipment can be used again, I presume.
Comparing prices at such a small scale experimental scale does not really make much sense, because the time invested is much more valuable. It would have been way cheaper to just buy the potassium metal instead of making it like this. If we scale it up, this might be a different story. But that is also unlikely to be honest :D
4:50 : "Trust me, I'm an expert... oh, I've made a mistake".
And that's how you become expert.
Lol that is basically instant karma :D
Wow, I thought that this potassium extraction method only works with potassium hydroxide, I didn't know that magnesium would also react with potassium carbonate! Who would've thought that potassium can be made this easily without electrolysis?
Yeah I also only discovered that by trying a bunch of different things.
Nice
Thanks
Can MgO replace by other metal oxide, e,g FeO?
Any metal less reactive the potassium should be able to do the work.
We start with Mg not with MgO and I highly doubt Fe would be able to replace Mg under the same conditions. Maybe if you make it much hotter.
8:10 Ominous crowing before you start the more dangerous part 🤣
Oh wow that's a funny coincidence :D
what are you going to do with it? I personally do not believe the coulombic explosion of the '15 Nature paper is fully explanatory and there is more to be revealed in the details there. Maybe that's a possibility for exploration.
That is certainly an interesting research project, even though very difficult. The first plan is actually to scale is up to get kilos of K metal and then make another video like my sodium and water video :D
I just realized you drew eyes on your safety glasses xD
Lol you are the first person to comment on that :D
Very curious . . . Why would magnesium reduce potassium from its compounds?
Isn't potassium much more reactive than magnesium?
Because magnesium oxide is very stable and potassium oxide very unstable. Also most of the energy in this reaction comes from the magnesium metal reducing the carbon. So the overall energy balance of this reaction is highly in favor for the formation of potassium metal.
new subscriber then. 😄
Welcome aboard!
Mans just rawdoggin NaK with his hands 😱
I made an entire video about that phenomena on my channel.
würde das mit jedem alkali und erd alkali metall funktionieren? also Rb2CO3 + 3 Mg = 2Rb + 3 MgO + C SrCO3 + 3 Mg = Sr + 3MgO + C usw?
Die Triebkraft hinter der Reaktion dürfte einerseits die Flüchtigkeit des zu reduzierenden Metalls sein und andererseits die Stabilität des Oxids des zu oxidierenden Metalls. Ich würde stark vermuten, dass das mit Rubidium funktioniert (Rubidium ist relativ flüchtig, Magnesiumoxid ist deutlich bevorzugt) aber mit Strontium wohl eher weniger (weniger flüchtig als Magnesium, Strontiumoxid ist auch relativ stabil).
Also mit Rb2CO3 höchstwahrscheinlich, mit Na2CO3 müsste ich es erst noch testen und mit Lithium und allen anderen Erdalkalimetallen eher nicht, da der Siedepunkt deutlich zu hoch ist. Für Magnesiumcarbonat würde das auch gar keinen Sinn ergeben, weil man im Endeffekt weniger Magnesium raus bekommt als man einsetzen würde. Zudem ist das auch viel zu günstig um es herzustellen. Erdalkalimetalle sind generell schwierig in einem Labor herzustellen, wegen den hohen Schmelz- und Siedepunkten für die verhältnismäßig hohe Reaktivität. Vielleicht ein Projekt für zukünftige Videos. ;-)
Is there a reason you cannot use alcohol-catalyzed magnesium in oil? Or would that be too boring, and the wacky method is the fun of it?
To my knowledge, the alcohol-route will work as well but it will need more sophisticated conditions and equipment. The solvent-free synthesis presented here is more robust.
I completly agree with what Frank says.
Well, that's completely fair enough.
könntest du mal in einer geschmolzenen salz elektrolyse von uranylhydroxid uran als metall herstellen?
Theoretisch ja, praktisch könnte das gesetzliche Probleme geben und Kontamination etc. ist auch so eine Sache.
Is it possible to produce gallium metal video in the first phase?😊
Maybe I will eventually make a video about gallium metal, but I can't promise anything.
I don't quite understand what you mean.
@@EliasExperiments I sent you a message on instagram, looking forward to your reply.
I didn't get anything
@@EliasExperiments Hey, man, how can I reach you?
Surprised! Thought the metal need to be more reactive than the oxide to reduce the oxide/ do a thermite reaction
The thing is that we also have Carbon in this equation, which messes things up. Also the stability of potassium oxide is rather low and magnesium oxide is very stable. All those things also influence what product formation is preffered.
It's not dirt, it's patina lol
Keep up the great work.
Haha, I agree! :D Thank you
The rust makes it a slip free set up so.... arguably safer...
Yes, I agree! :D
The last reaction was a rocket engine!!!
Who doesn't like fire?😃
Yeah one of the most fascinating things :D
❤
;-)
10:40 - Ah! A failed pipe bomb. How quaint!
It went exactly as planned ;-)
Kazakhstan, greatest country in the world
Yeah sure :D
It would be cool if you made a video on the carbothermal reduction method of making sodium. And also like 👍 Samonie67’s comment!
If you mean Na2CO3 and C to make Na, I don't think I am able to do that efficiently with the equipment I have. I tried it with K2CO3 and only got very small amount of K.
Im not understanding how did u use Mg as a reducing agent. Potassium is higher in the electrochemical series so it has a lower tendency to accept ekectrons. As far as i know metallurgy of Na K and Al can only be done by electrolytic methods l.
Because the magnesium reacts with the carbonate first which releases a lot of energy and the remaining K2O is quite unstable, while MgO is much more stable.
@@EliasExperiments Oh so its thermodynamically unfavorable but entropically favorable?
No, if that would be the case the reaction would be endothermic, which it obviously isn't. Potassium metal, carbon and magnesium oxide are the thermodinamically favored products in this system.
The reaction between magnesium and potassium hydroxide looks like it could potentially work as a solid rocket fuel.
Yes it does but isn't air stable.
Not really, it's closer to a thermite than to a normal rocket fuel, mostly because it's not energy dense enougg, so you end up with a heavy material that produces tons of slag
Not really, performance rocket fuels need to produce large volumes of hot gas to efficiently use the energy produced, this reaction produces mostly hot solids and very little gas. That's why sugar fuel/R-candy is considered novice/amateur rocket fuel, the majority of it's reaction product is KOH/Potassium Hydroxide. The good stuff, APCP (Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant) rocket fuel, produces mostly hot gas with a small quantity of aluminum oxide, but because of the heat produced by the conversion of metallic aluminum to it's solid oxide you end up with a net increase in gas volume due to additional heating of the already hot gas (consisting of water, carbon dioxide and hydrogen chloride).
I have no idea about rocket fuels, but I can see how it might power something.
The last test looks Iike you made rocket fuel😮
Yes indeed :D
From Iraq 🇮🇶 we see you
Lol okay :D
How it is possible if potassium electronegativity is -2,92V amd magnesium -2,38V
Because the electronegativity of carbon is much higher and MgO is a very stable compound while K2O is rather unstable.
My dude sounds like Dr. Strangelove.
A couple of people have told me that lol.
Das Ist gutten!
Danke!
I‘m pretty sure that lab stand doesn’t have what C. tetani craves.
May be wrong, because potassium is an electrolyte..
Yeah I agree, even though I have no idea about C.tetani XD
@@EliasExperiments Clostridium tetani 👀
05:37 that was funny
Thank you! :D
10:15 I dont see the issue. It worked perfectly. xD
Yes it worked perfectly demonstrating what you should not do :D
Das ist gud 👍🏻
Dnake!
Can anybody explain the chemistry of this process? How can a less reactive metal (Mg) reduce a much more reactive metal (K) from its salts?
Because MgO is more stable then K2O and the Mg reactions mostly with the CO2 from the carbonate, which releases most of the energy for the reaction.
@@EliasExperiments So, if I understand you correctly, MgO statistically is less likely to be created than K2O due to higher reactivity of Potassium, but once created a MgO molecule has such strong bonds that there are not enough ionic energy to break it whereas K2O is not so strongly bound. So, with time the amount of MgO will constantly grow until all Potassium ions are (reluctantly) reduced to metal. Am I wildly wrong with this description?
You are mostly right, but I would not call it statistics, it is just that the energy balance of the reaction is in favor of potassium metal.
6:00 let's make pootassium
Lol
135 for 25g? Lot cheaper and more exciting than some other things lol
It is 34 g K out of 100 g K2CO3 (+100 g Mg)
i hate how youtube only notified me after a month
Hm, I am glad that you have found it now!
@@EliasExperiments I declare that from now on instead of 9-5s everyone should officially be crazy scientists
Lol that would be really fun :D
Potash-ium
Are you making fun of my pronounciation? :D
Geting joint greas for free wod be a dream
It would not be much help for me, because I can get it for really cheap already.
Könnt ihr vielleicht auch folgende auf deutsch machen das wäre super 😊
Wenn ich die Zeit hätte das zu übersetzen, hätte ich das schon längst gemacht, aber im Moment ist mir das zu viel, da bräuchte ich echt Hilfe.
Mark Forster?
Are you suggesting I sound like Mark Forster?
Yes, but nice video either way.
Lol you are the first person telling me that. :D
did he just dip his hand into NaK right before stating that potassium is extremely reactive with water-
Yes
Yes, I made an entire video about it on my channel, explaining that phenomena.
If the dirty lab stand bothers you as much as you claim why did you not clean it yourself. As I understand it nether I or Elias have a problem with its appearance.
That's a fair argument lol
the labstand is fine, would not clean it
Yes, I agree! :D
make more
I will try! :D
Ещё один любитель булюм булюма рукой в мерке .
:D
Excerpt from the last video-😂
Yeah that is also my favorite part :D
Finally I found a good substitution for thoisoi - now he put that silly dub voice 😅
Thank you for the kind feedback ;-)