Ok bees, this bee has read and heard alot from other bees regarding the difficulties associated with amalgamating or activating Al with Hg2Cl2. Indeeed until very recently antibody would have agreed, it did indeed take awhile to properly amalgamate with this chem. Further it often took so long to amalgamate that the foil was so crunched up or compressed by stirring that there were many areas that did not amalgamate at all.
However in a recent conversation with Blue (a bee from the past) he/she was adamant that amalgamation could take place with Hg2Cl2 in minutes.
proceedure:
add appropriate amount of Hg2Cl2 to a 50% aqueous methanolic solution. Bring to mild reflux for 3-4 minutes, then add Al remove heat and stir for additional 5 minutes, after which time a vigourous effervecence will be visible, solvent will become gray with dissolved Al, and amalgamation is complete. Decant solution, rinse once with whatever rxn solvent is to be used, decant and add reaction solvent and reagents. Allow reagents to react work-up according to preference.
the work of 10-15 minutes
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