I wonder if you could have just dried the boric acid + NaCl and grind it to powder. Add Mg and maybe borax as flux, then ignite. If that works (I think it will), it would save you some purification steps.
How do you make the hydride of Boron? Boron trioxide can react with fluorine to make Boron trifluoride(as far as I know, I ain't trying unless I have an immediate use) Could that be a pathway to making the hydride?
You mean diborane (B2H6)? Crude borane can be made by reacting magnesium boride with an acid. Magnesium boride is produced by doing the same reaction shown in this video but with a higher magnesium stochiometry. The process you mean is reacting BF3 with a hydride which produce diborane with higher purity. Diborane is also often made with NaBH4.
@@hantrio4327 so I'm not going to get to NaBH4 that way if the equilibrium goes the other way (dyslexia?).. diborane is a useful reducing agent, but definitely not something I want to sit on (attempt to store) Would the termite reaction with aluminium work just as good as the magnesium? By react with acid, I assume you mean the hx gas not an aqueous solution, yes? Or organic soluble acid? Ending up with aluminum borohydride would be ideal of course.
@@petevenuti7355 Is it your goal to NaBH4? Aluminium can be used instead of magnesium but then you need to add sulfur to the mix to sustain the reaction however aluminium has the advantage that it will react less with the formed boron so it will be purer. I was thinking about aqueous acids but I don't have any experience with this reaction, maybe it won't work.
I think Sodium/Mg can also be used to reduce boric oxide to elemental boron. And regarding boranes (B2H6 in particular) there are several ways to make it involves use of LiH with BCl3 we can go with other reducing agent like BCl3 with H2 /LiAlH4. With BF3 one can go with NaOH to produce DB. According to a literature it can also be blade using NaBH4 with I2.
Yeah you can't make a hydride without a hydride source or hydrogen gas at high temperature. This is generally true for all elements that can be hydrided.
Did you remember to include water in your yield calcuation for boric acid because i got a yield of 45% using these numbers: Na₂B₄O₅(OH)₄]·8H₂O 381,37 g/mol , H3BO3 68,31 g/mol
