Ni+??=NiCl?? Crash Course in Nickel Chemistry Pls

[sYnThOmAtIc]

Stranger?? Can't I get my addict title back???

Anyway, I need to know how to turn nickel ingots into nickel salts, like NiCl. I have read that HCL and H2SO4 do not dissolve Ni only HNO3. So what do I do with the NiNO3 salt? Can it be combined with another salt, in one of those cool displacemtne reactions, or does it need to be burned in a crucible to get NiO and proceed to NiCl from there? Also, what about Nickel hydroxide? Is it hard to make or even possible and can it be pratically converted to NiCl.. If I'm way off base feel free to flame me and post an exerpt from some inorganic chem book that I should have by now and educate me  

Thanks in advance so I don't get an insignificant rating for showing my appreciation for the help.

[gsus]

...is NiCl₂. you can make it dissolve in HCl with a grinder if you just want to make a couple grams. this would give the oxide and that would make it dissolve all the faster.

  or the nitrate Ni(NO₃)₂ could be made with dilute HNO₃ and the metal. this could be heated to NiO or precipitated as Ni(OH)₂ with the minimum amt. of alkali hydroxide, evaporation and recrystallization (anal) of the water will give reusable alkali nitrate.

[Chromic]

gsus: your first method won't work. nickel doesn't react very quickly with concentrated hydrochloric acid.

This reaction is very difficult. Even boiling nickel in concentrated sulfuric acid does not produce a very fast reaction to nickel sulfate (it will work after many, many hours though--too long and you won't see a fast reaction either... you'll be lucky if you get a gram). I've tried this before, and you really do need aqua regia if you want a significant amount of nickel salt.

Why not just buy nickel carbonate? You'll pay about $15 for a lb from a pottery shop.

[gsus]

i was aware of the slowness of Ni with HCl and sulfuric, and the passivity with conc. nitric. did you notice the "grinding" part of my post? if you take a metal grinding wheel to nickel in air - nickel+O₂+heat= some nickel with an oxide coat. the oxide has no problem dissolving. how finely divided was your nickel, btw? syntho himself has asked in another nickel post "why not just buy...", but he did not buy nickel salts as he recommended, so... maybe he wanted some Ni to use for other purposes, too. and as for other acids, did you try dilute HNO₃? if you still have some Ni left, give it a try.

[sYnThOmAtIc]

Chromic, because I need the metal for other purposes and the fact that I can get the metal ingots for $19lb and Cr for forty. I did check around the pottery place here and they don't have shit of interest.

Gsus, I am broke. Thats why. I recomended that to someone who was already spending money, or had the money to spend. College keeps me broke recently. Why would I spend fourty dollars on a pound of nickel chloride when I cen get two pounds of nickel metal for that? A pound of metal will make almost two kgs of salt. HUGE savings.


Ahh, so the nickel nitrate can be precipitated as hydroxide as in the Chromium salts page.... Cool. Sounds easier than burning it in a crucible. It's also cheaper to precipitate. What exactly are the best concentrations of nitric to use? What is reccomended for disolving the metal and what is too strong? I'm assuming the nitric can be of the homemade alkali nitrate variety? I guess I need to find a good nitric synth now. Got plenty of stump remover here  

Plus, I'm starting to like the idea of indefinite storage life of metal ingots versus extremely poisonous salts and limited shelf lifes. Also, it's less suspicous and stuff to have a rock collection than jars of chemicals.

[gsus]

well ive no idea what the ideal concentration is. the distilled HNO3 diluted with 5X its vol. H2O does work. more dilute may work better. i ground nickel rounds with a rough bench grinder, the sort that throws sparks. this really helps, though no fun. should've, but didn't, heat to maximize oxide. i never saw any brown NO2 fumes with the mentioned concentration. anyhow, just dont expect it to dissolve like Al or Mg. it'll be awhile. maybe dist. from a mix of water, K or Na nitrate, and H2SO4 would be unnecessary, and you could just toss in the metal. anything that the hydroxide might grab on OH'ing and couldnt be washed out would be lost in later steps. or maybe sulfate, K, and excess whatever would slow down the rate and this would be a bad idea. maybe you could optimize this for us. the rate of bubbling is easy to spot. it won't take long for your solution to turn green, and you'll know this is no bullshit.

  one thing i do know, i'd like a shelf of palladium ingots too. that is a good idea.

[Nicodem]

What about hydrogen peroxide? Some metals (like W) that don't dissoleve in HCl or H2SO4 and slowly in HNO3 dissolve very fast in an acid with the addition of H2O2. Maybe you could try H2SO4/H2O2?

[Osmium]

> Why would I spend fourty dollars on a pound of nickel chloride when
> I cen get two pounds of nickel metal for that?

Because you would get a pure material and there is no work and other expenses involved.

> A pound of metal will make almost two kgs of salt. HUGE savings.

Wrong. Lots of work, additional costs for other chemicals and equipment, and an outcome that isn't guaranteed.
You know, just spilling a few drops of acid on your pants will literally eat away all those HUGE savings.

[sYnThOmAtIc]

$40 a pound?

What, for the Cr or the nickel chloride? I thougt it might be a little high for the salt. That is through a local plating shop. No ID, no paper trail, or shipping costs. So it is comparable to other sources??

I'm not expecting it to react near as fast as Mg or Cr. That solid chunk of Cr took several hours to fully dissolve when heated in a boiling water bath. Just as long as it dissolves within a week or so at room temp. I wonder if I should use my sonic cleaning bath to speed it up since I won't be able to grind it up first? I dunno. I got lots. I'll try a bunch of different things. Besides, if it doesn't work it won't dissolve, so I won't lose any    Which is, of course, the whole problem