Making Lithium Metal

[@WaffleStaffel]

Nice. Very clean set up. Leonard Lerner, in _"Small Scale Synthesis of Laboratory Reagents,"_ says the "great affinity of lithium for molten LiCl" coats and protects the lithium, negating the need for an inert atmosphere. Coalescing the beads into one piece will probably require doing it under oil or molten salt. He also uses an Iron cathode.

[@ScrapScience]

Interesting! That explains a lot. When I attempted to melt the lithium into one piece, I actually did it under a film of molten LiCl due to that very ability of LiCl to 'wet' the surface of the lithium and protect it. The reason it failed was because the lithium bead stuck to the stainless steel spoon I was using to melt it, and I couldn't get it out. If I do it again, I'll probably try to melt it in something different...

[@olimp231]

Great video! Congratulation on successful lithium extraction after a few failed attempts with batteries. Very well explained. Looking forward your next videos.

[@edwinsalisbury83]

Well done Harry. I did this 9 months ago and managed to make a small amount of lithium it was fun trying to collect the globules. The crucible I had was made of tantalum.

[@C-M-E]

That's quite a lot more lithium than I was expecting! I was thinking you might get a little bead or maybe a coating on your cathode. Nice! For whatever reason, watching that second go activated a smell in my nose, like the first time I made sulphuric acid in a reaction as a byproduct in a thermal conversion. Oh, what a stinky burn. Took me days to get over it, and I was well clear of the reaction vessel.

[@idontknowmyfirstname69]

Awesome video! Thank you sir... I've been searching for a video like this for a while after many failed attempts at reducing every lithium compound i could think of.

[@uniteamerica9446]

Lithium hydroxide would not liberate chlorine gas like lithium chloride will. Thanks for explaining everything so well. Nice video.

[@RobsRepairs]

Great to see, thanks. i am working on a vacuum lithium evaporation device which coats lithium which has been melted to high temperatures using a physical vapour deposition technique. its great to see how lithium metal is manufacturered. Cheers

[@杨杨亚宁]

Also, if you have time, you can try electrolysis of cesium hydroxide to produce cesium. There is a video website in our country where a person uses a tetrafluoro beaker as a container surface, adds paraffin oil and 2% sodium hydroxide to reduce the melting point

[@leod7454]

Very cool videos. Keep up the good work. Very interesting.

[@ElectraFlarefire]

Nice to see a shiney new power supply put to use! And even nicer to see this reaction working! It's a shame the extraction from batteries didn't work but at least you demonstrated that if you DID get lithium chloride, you could get the metal back out again.

[@ScrapScience]

I have a feeling it's not going to be shiny and new for long haha. I can already see a bit of rust forming from having it so close to a chlorine-generating reaction... I think I'll have to take better care of it in the future. And yes, it would have been nice to make our lithium from the batteries themselves, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

[@TreHazenF]

I'm so glad that my prediction was right! I knew your channel gonna blow up Joined you at 2k subs and you gained 10k since then Its insane! Hope you get what you diserve Love your content

[@Hati321]

Very cool. Looking forward to the series.

[@jasonmorgan661]

Between you and periodic table of videos I'm acquiring some pretty awesome need to know stuff... btw Try cooling the cathode and anode to allow lithium to coagulate near the Cathode..

[@patrickbowen9395]

Itd be really cool to see just how high you could get the amps, say with either a welder or a wound step down transformer with a bridge recifier. Maybe not to safe.....BUT would still be interesting.

[@Pootycat8359]

Note that Li, in contact with H2O, won't burn. It's the least reactive of the alkali metals, and acts more like an alkaline earth.

[@angelusmendez5084]

Awesome project, thanks! 🎉

[@chemistryofquestionablequa6252]

Why not use the measuring cup as the cathode? It should protect it from corrosion from the liquid chloride.

[@ScrapScience]

Correct. Using the crucible as the cathode would protect it, but (from my experience in similar experiments) there are a couple of issues with doing this: 1) I've found that molten lithium sticks to stainles steel very strongly (similar to how water wets glass), which would make the metal very difficult to extract from the cell. In fact, I ran into this issue a couple of times in this experiment, where the lithium drops stuck to the cell wall, spread out over the surface, and became virtually unrecoverable. 2) Even if we can separate the lithium from the crucible, setups using the crucible as the cathode tend to generate the metallic product (in this case, lithium) all over the place, mainly in the forms of tiny beads that are difficult to coalesce. The ease of collecting a single bead of lithium on a small wire cathode outweighs the benefit of corrosion protection in my opinion.

[@chemistryofquestionablequa6252]

@@ScrapScience that makes sense, thanks!

[@fmdj]

very inspirational thank you, will probably attempt once I have figured out how to build a safe setup in my place

[@Neptunium]

very nice sir! Andy from Andymaker recommended your excellent channel! Thank you for all your work! Lithium is an interesting element for more than meets the eye...

[@ScrapScience]

Great to see you here! I've been a big fan of your videos for a while.

[@Neptunium]

@@ScrapScience thank you so much! Always a pleasure meeting new talented individuals! You've got yourself a new sub!

[@EddieTheH]

This is my 3rd attempt to watch this. YT glitched out and gave me a 10 minute, unskippable ad, twice!!! 🤬 YT needs to get it's act together. Awesome video though, well worth the effort of getting it to play!!!

[@chemicalmaster3267]

+Scrap Science What do you think about extracting lanthanides from things like neodymium magnets or lighter flints? That could be very interesting to watch!

[@ScrapScience]

Hmmm... I like it. I'll add it to the list of video ideas. I'll also have to get some magnets I suppose.

[@adelinyoungmark1929]

Hey, since you haven't done a vid on electronics specifically in a while (about 3 years I think) I think it would be a great video idea to essentially make another power supply designed specifically for electro chem. (i.e one with variable current and voltage control). At least I think that would be interesting to watch.

[@clintongryke6887]

These are good videos, mate.

[@hanleypc]

You have a great view from your back yard!

[@mikeconnery4652]

A very nice experiment

[@AdricM]

since lithium is so soft and ductile. you should be able to smash it into one lump, big steel bolts and a big nut that fits them, screw the nut on one end of the bolt to for a cup. and add the lithium pellets, and then squish by threading in the other bolt until you have a nice flat chunk, then remove one bolt and extract your lithium puck but screwing the other bolt in until it comes out.

[@ScrapScience]

Interesting. I'll give it a go at some point. I'd definitely prefer a single lump of lithium over the tiny pellets.

[@sillybears4673]

Would you try to add a current through a recrystalization reaction? I’d like to see what electricity in a super saturated solution would yield as in shape and if there’s any difference in shape of the crystals when you recrystalize with the steady current in the liquid

[@shitheadjohnson2797]

thanks for all the vids, helped out alot!!!

[@richardamullens]

You can electrolyse a solution of anhydrous lithium chloride in absolute alcohol and deposit the metal

[@2001pulsar]

Why not use the stainless crucible as the cathode?

[@ScrapScience]

A few reasons: 1) I found that molten lithium sticks to stainless steel very strongly, which would make it very difficult to remove from the reaction. 2) Even if it were easy to sepatate the lithium from the stainless steel, using the crucible as the cathode tends to make our metallic product in the form of tiny beads that are difficult to coalesce. It's much easier to collect from a small wire. 3) Molten salts are extremely conductive, and having high surface area electrodes is unneccesary for maintaining a high current in most cases.

[@Wolfram69756D]

If the current was constant you should have obtained 1.55 g of Li, 30% of that looks still ok considering how it would oxidize in air.

[@markshort9098]

That's cool as.. I'll have to try this one day

[@That_Chemist]

very cool!

[@ScrapScience]

Woah! High praise from the king of the Mouth Pipetters himself. Glad you enjoyed!

[@kreynolds1123]

Think a graphite/clay pot would work well as both a crucible and electrode?

[@ScrapScience]

Since we determined that graphite degrades extremely slowly when used as an anode in a molten chloride salt, yes. Provided it's conductive enough, using a clay/graphite crucible would likely make an excellent choice as the anode connection. In fact, I recently used this technique (successfully) for another reactive metal extraction, though it might be a while before I'm able to edit and upload the video.

[@kreynolds1123]

@@ScrapScience Thank you for the quick response.

[@shintokatana17]

cool epxeriment!

[@杨杨亚宁]

You can add solid paraffin to collect it

[@destroyer4416]

I think you seek the words low density fun videos keep it up !

[@raystone4673]

As the lithium comes out of the special percentages LiCl-KCl mix, more of the KCl would remain. This would necessitate the mix temperature to be higher wouldn't it, making the operation a little more difficult to succeed with?

[@ScrapScience]

I agree. Removing lithium from the melt increases the melting point of the eutectic. In this particular experiment, removing less than a gram of lithium really wouldn't have changed much, but it is certainly something to consider for longer runs.

[@dylanharvey138]

Hi. Do you know what isotope of Lithium this is. I was looking all over the internet for how lithium-6 / deuteride was produced, and could find literally nothing, so I turned to KZbin.

[@ScrapScience]

This is just plain elemental lithium, a mixture of lithium-6 and lithium-7. The separation of the isotopes is a significant undertaking, and is (was) done industrially by the use of something called the COLEX process. Deuterium is separated by the Girdler-sulfide process.

[@krystiannowakowski7980]

Hi! great video, thanks! Where did you get your LiCl from? Do you know of any vendor that would sell to a private person?

[@ScrapScience]

Plenty of Ebay sellers are happy to sell lithium chloride. That's where I got mine.

[@krystiannowakowski7980]

@@ScrapScience Thanks for the reply. I have tried looking on ebay before but I haven't found any vendor that would ship to Spain. Have just been looking into how to make it at home but it looks like a lengthy process and the fact that you didn't manage to make it work is not encouraging :

[@adriantomaszewski7460]

Hi, I have some questions about molten salt electrolysis, could I contac you somehow?

[@ScrapScience]

You can always find my email on my channel page. Though be warned, I tend to only check it every few months.

[@magnuswootton6181]

i wonder if u can melt lithium and crystalize a carbonate in it, then it would be like lithium steel! copper carbonate inside lithium of crystalization. it would set really quick too, so i wonder if it would get the same effect as a prince rupert drop as it solidifies.

[@Preyhawk81]

Lithium is the only alkaly metall you can make with electrolysis in an organic solvent. Pyridin works :) no heat

[@jefflebowski629]

Can this be done with strontium chloride? Or would the strontium ignite before it could be recovered?

[@ScrapScience]

In theory, yes, it can be done. Strontium chloride also forms a eutectic system with potassium chloride, and apparently electrolyses in much the same way we've observed for lithium. I'll very likely be doing a video on this as part of the series, but it might be a while away.

[@jmdawlat]

If it is a very soft metal, why would you try to melt it into one piece? You could just hammer a bunch of them together into one ingot.

[@ScrapScience]

It might be possible, but I’ve never been able to get the pieces to bond properly just by squishing them together. I assume surface oxidation prevents it from working nicely. Even doing it under oil doesn’t seem to allow it.

[@ZoonCrypticon]

@23:00 I missed the (red) flame-test !

[@EddieTheH]

I believe the term for "not-dense" would be "light", no?

[@ScrapScience]

In a general sense, I'd say yes, but from a scientific perspective, I think it's more complicated. 'Heavy' and 'dense' are obviously two completely different concepts, and I would think that 'light' is more appropriate as the opposite of 'heavy', at least from the way people often use the word. If that's the case, having 'light' be the opposite of both things is a weird way for scientific language to work, and maybe there should be another word that exclusively refers to 'low-density' and not 'low-mass'? I don't really know what I'm talking about here.

[@nattsurfaren]

How much lithium do you think is left in the melt when it stops producing on the electrode?

[@ScrapScience]

In hindsight, I don't think the cell ever actually stopped producing lithium. It's likely that I was just seeing reduced current draw from moving the electrodes around. In the second test, I didn't observe any decrease in lithium production. Either way, we were nowhere near depleting the lithium from the melt. Even at 100% current efficiency, we could only have extracted a maximum of 20% of all the lithium from the salt.

[@nattsurfaren]

@@ScrapScience Thank you :)

[@vikashbharti4144]

What are the major challenges that you face in the production of metallic lithium??

[@ScrapScience]

I don't really know what you're asking here. Are you talking about the challenges I faced personally when doing this, or the general difficulties involved in making the metal?

[@JFBond-zs8xf]

Hello, I wish you would zoom in on the cell. The stones and grass around are not too interesting.

[@ScrapScience]

Hmm, yeah that makes sense. My camera doesn’t have good zoom capabilities and I don’t really like to get it too close to the melt. I’ll see if I can sort something out before the next video on molten salt reactions.

[@gertasgh4841]

When potassium from koh?

[@ScrapScience]

We'll eventually get around to trying it. Potassium extraction by this method is very, very difficult, due to the high solubility of potassium in the molten KOH. There might be a couple of workarounds though...

[@gertasgh4841]

@@ScrapScience I once did it with naoh and wanted to try koh

[@muyfoods]

👏👏this channel need to be more popular.maybe need to improve thubnail😁

[@chemistryofquestionablequa6252]

Nice! I've been wanting to get some lithium for reactions and hate taking apart batteries for it (it looks like you're making meth if you buy a bunch of lithium batteries). Any excuse to do electrochemistry is great too. It's the closest thing to black magic that really exists.

[@ScrapScience]

Yep, the battery extraction technique is rather annoying in my opinion (though it does definitely give you more lithium, to be fair). Having homemade lithium is way cooler too.

[@karolus28]

cool

[@johnslugger]

*Use Lithium Carbonate next time!*

[@ScrapScience]

Why?

[@johnslugger]

@@ScrapScience *No nasty Chlorine fumes AND no forming of CHLORATES which took half of your lithium in solution. You got some Lithium BUT also made a new salt called Lithium Chlorate which dissolves lithium metal when in molten state. It also has a very low melting temperature and sucks water from air (Hydroscopic).*

[@ScrapScience]

Buy why would chlorate form in the first place? Where's the oxygen coming from in this reaction you're proposing? Even if we were making chlorate, I would have thought we were at temperatures which would decompose the chlorate back into chloride anyway. Additionally, how do you suggest dealing with the significantly higher melting point of lithium carbonate?

[@johnslugger]

@@ScrapScience Oxidation of Chlorine at surface interface layer due to lack of lithium ions. Called a "balancing reaction"

[@ScrapScience]

I'm still very much struggling to see where the oxygen is coming from. Do you have any literature about this reaction you can point me towards? A 'balancing reaction' is something I've never heard of, and doesn't yield any results when I search for it.

[@Pootycat8359]

I wanna make lithium! Not a few grams, no, NO! But POUNDS & KILOGRAMS, and if possible (I'm fantasizing, now), TONS! That's because I want to make the highly sought after & precious, LiAlH4. First, the Li is burnt in an atmosphere of H2 (cheap), then the LiH is reacted with AlCl3 in anhydrous ether (cheap), then I can sell the product to the local university for use in their organic chem. lab classes ($$$$$$). :)

[@Pootycat8359]

Also, the Cl2 should be collected & liquified, and the cylinders sold to the city Parks & Recreation Dept, for use in their swimming pools.

[@Jkauppa]

water bubble the chlorine

[@Jkauppa]

chlorinated water

[@Jkauppa]

making carbides, with electrolysis

[@franciscoparraguez4576]

🌱🌱🌱⚡️⚡️⚡️🚀🪴🪴👏👏👏👏

[@garyeast7259]

Yeah well known facts keep getting in my way too. Pain in the u know what. It weird how well know facts dont tend to become known to idiots like me til they have already screwed u over

[@chemiverse4809]

First view

[@TeslaFactory]

Forbidden playdoh 😂

[@Mold____AscorbicAcid]

1:17 don't try to hide the supplier we all know its auschemsource

[@dandan-gf4jk]

Can you share the filter type on that mask? I was quite interested in the topic some time ago and tbh I couldn't find a filter suitable for acid gases, all manufacturers recommended a SCBA. I'm guessing you might be talking about a B (non-voc inorganic gas) rated filter, correct? UPDATE, i've checked and there is a lot of conflicting information but the manufacturer says B is a-ok for Cl2 multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/439882O/3mtm-filter-fitting-data-sheet.pdf

[@ScrapScience]

To be honest, I'm not sure of the exact type of filter. I just grabbed the one that said 'RATED FOR CHLORINE' on the side. As far as I remember, it definitely included the B type filter though, yes.

[@dandan-gf4jk]

@@ScrapScience Well good luck :) Even though I have all the filters I need I still like to do controlled breathing techniques and walk away if I don't have to be around acid gases