So the other day swim decided he was going to prepare a bunch of methanol with pdcl2 dissolved to have ready for future wackers. He started off with 6g pdcl2 per liter of meoh. That works out to about 2.4g/400ml (mm scale).
Swim let it stir all day and night and even brought the meoh up to a very gentle reflux, but still all the salt would not dissolve. When swim transferred the solution to another container, he noticed that the undissolved solids at the bottom did not look like pdcl2 powder at all. It looked black and very very fine.
The solution is a very very deep rust brown when looked at through light, and is completely opaque without light. This is in keeping with all the other pdcl2 in meoh dissolutions swim has done in the past. There is definitely a good amount of pdcl2 dissolved, but these other partices just don't want to.
Does anyone know what this stuff could be? Swim couldn't find any data on the solubility of pdcl2 in meoh, so he doesn't know how much the meoh will hold. The mm wacker calls for a concentration of 5g/l and swim used 6g/l, but swim brought the solution to reflux. So he thinks it can't be still undissolved salt. Any ideas? Could it be palladium metal particles contaminating his pdcl2?
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but swim needs to distribute this meoh amoung wackers and it would be nice to know how much of the pdcl2 he though was in the solution really actually isn't.
