I tried using a manganese dioxide thermite to extract manganese metal from battery sludge, and while the thermite worked, I couldn't recover any manganese metal lumps. I used washed, baked, and ball milled manganese dioxide battery paste from alkaline and dry cell batteries along with ball milled aluminum powder I made in a previous video. The manganese dioxide was mixed with the aluminum powder in a 2.42:1 weight ratio, then placed in a clay flowerpot and ignited with a magnesium ribbon. It burned with moderate intensity for several minutes. Instead of completly molten slag, I found a crumbly, dirt-like powder in the flowerpot. I tried the experiment again (with finer aluminum powder), but I still couldn't recover metallic manganese from the slag powder.
According to the internet, battery paste consists of manganese dioxide along with a lot of carbon, which would absorb a lot of the reaction's heat and also throw off the stoichiometric ratios of ingredients. In the future, I will either dissolve and filter the battery paste and then convert it back to pure manganese dioxide or else I will simply buy pottery manganese dioxide and repeat the thermite.
Although I may have failed to get manganese metal, I succeeded in creating a long-lasting, ultra-bright fireball, and that is just fine with me. :)
Companion website post:
sciencewithscreens.blogspot.co...
Music:
"Unwritten Return" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
29 дек 2015
