I really like that you’re actually trying this, even if it isn’t successful. Nobody ever seems to show their failures and it’s genuinely interesting to see what does and doesn’t work out.

The paper seems to be about boronization of steel, not making elemental boron itself. Boron might be in metal electrode lattice.

@ScrapScience

Жыл бұрын

Aha, so it seems I misinterpreted the paper. I thought that might be the case. Thanks for clearing that up!

@user-uf8gu9ne1g

Жыл бұрын

@@ScrapScience You might be able to take advantage of oxophillicity of aluminum and make some boron compound out of alkyl borates and aluminum compound, but I'm not sure whether it would work at all.

Boric acid can sometimes be found as an insecticide powder or for foot baths and you could use it to make Game of Thrones Wildfire for a KZread Short to get some views if you want. This seems to be what was used historically with aluminum or magnesium as the reducing agent. If you look up a table of dissociation energies for chemical bonds, the boron-oxygen bond is a quite strong covalent bond at 806 kilojoules per mole. I think it's unlikely that electrolysis will be sufficient to break those bonds. The more modern approach seems to be to displace the oxygens with halogen and then reduce the boron halides, which seems like pretty nasty chemistry to carry out. That Chemist seems like a good channel for some potential brainstorming on how to produce elemental boron.

Happy to see that you are still at it! I have been longing for my garage laboratory but I haven't had much time to do anything for a while. Keep it up!

I appreciate that disclaimer.. it's not like all the other twats telling people not to do something, and now my mind will be ready for what ever happens.

I tried this also some time back when doing my graphene trials (I stuck with the latter and have it nailed down if that tells you anything), and the one time I got it to work, the yield rate was catastrophically depressing. My one good batch was sub 10% and purity was debatable at best. I did end up learning a lot about salt bath nitriding as it were, so not a total waste of effort.

I don't care about if it's successful, I just like your video's so much!

Thanks for sharing this with us! I really appreciate your helping us see your process.

One thing might be to use glassy carbon, I've never tried it or you can coat the graphite with lead dioxide (through the electrolysis of lead nitrate) I'm yet to try that too but both should fare better in corrosive conditions BTW awesome if you did make bromine 😜

maybe a more "neutral" crucible could help (high alumina?)

Thankyou for the disclaimer. Good try and you are not on my waste of time list because of the disclaimer.

Nice one, keep it up! 🙌

I would use electrolytic production of Aluminum as a model (boron is in the same family as Al). BF4 salts are pretty widely available. However, since molten boron is not a realistic option, finding the appropriate cathode is probably the unsolved problem. Elemental boron is a only a semi-conductor at best.

What kind of voltage does it take to force 7A through that kind of system?

@ScrapScience

Жыл бұрын

Not too high. Molten salts are pretty conductive. The cell required voltages between 5-12 V to maintain that current throughout the experiment. This is working off my memory, so might not be 100% accurate.

@Scrogan

Жыл бұрын

@@ScrapScience I was thinking that maybe you could get hiker currents by going for a lower-voltage PSU, but you’re already basically dead-on with a common 12V. Might be able to increase your surface area with a graphite crucible as the anode and a curly wire as the cathode, but those crucibles are expensive.

is there a reason you can't electrolize boron trioxide? since then it should be a fairly simple reduction reaction?

@ScrapScience

Жыл бұрын

Boron trioxide is a covalent compound, not an ionic one, so it won't be conductive on its own in the molten state. Additives could be used to make the melt conductive, but the only methods I've found in that regard seem to require fluorides, which I'm not a fan of obtaining or using.

@evilplaguedoctor5158

Жыл бұрын

@@ScrapScience ohhh, that makes sense. Thanks for the reply!

Never give up! sodium metal reacting to reduce Borates into boron. Interesting concept. Do you know why exactly it failed?

@ScrapScience

Жыл бұрын

Quite honestly, I don't think sodium reduces tetraborate ions at all under these conditions. As pointed out to me in another comment, it seems as though the paper I adapted the experiment from may have just been referring to a surface effect that occurs on steel cathode surfaces. It might be that the process only generates extremely small amounts of boron-steel alloy on the cathode surface, rather than disperse elemental boron into the melt.

@ununeniy5843

Жыл бұрын

@@ScrapScience there was a lot of sodium, I saw it due to the yellow Na2O2 on the cathode, it means that you had not enought B2O3 in your scratch (Na2O*2B2O3 - borax) if you added some more (Na2O*(3-4)B2O3) it could be better because Na2O works as electrolyte, and B2O3 is a thing that you want to decompose you can imagine it as a aluminium production from Na3AlF6 and Al2O3(Na2O and B2O3 in that situation) just add more B2O3 and it will give better resault reaction also should look as with Al: 2B2O3=4B+3O2 3C+3O2=3CO2 there must be no sodium, but it was, you should try as i said it also helps to make melting point lower, that is really important

Very boroning

@usefulemptiness2410

Жыл бұрын

As a boronic comment as they come.

@four4eight

4 ай бұрын

your such a boron

cool, its fun at least

Few thoughts: Can boron be produced with sodium and borax without current? Or if Mg supposedly works why not throw some MgO in the mix and electrolyse that? Isn't boron a shit conductor? If you make any and it sticks it would passivate the cathode?

@ScrapScience

Жыл бұрын

I'm pretty sure sodium or magnesium won't reduce molten borax, at least from what I've seen. This is the main reason I was very skeptical of this process from the start. And yes, boron does not conduct very well at all, even at temperatures this high. I was simply hoping the boron wouldn't adhere to the electrode strongly, and would flake off as the electrolysis proceeded.

I wonder if we help you to obtain a high temperature, ultra high vacuum condition or reducing atmosphere like very hot but not burning H2 atmosphere it will help?

Good to see the effort, thanks OK... What's next?

@ScrapScience

Жыл бұрын

Glad you enjoyed! If I do come back to making boron, I might eventually try something like this: doi.org/10.1149/1945-7111/abd2d7

could be some odd carbon nanoparticles in that end product, there are some that are magnetic

Can you convert the Borax to boric acid try that?

Thank you

Hey great vid

Amazing.... But you should have bought boric acid and dehydrate it and do electrolysis on it also the boron oxide melts under 500C so it will be convenient in that way too and it would be almost 100 percent efficient current wise at a good voltage of 3v

@ScrapScience

4 ай бұрын

Boron oxide is not conductive when molten, since it is a covalent compound, making this kind of tricky. Electrolysing it can apparently be done with the addition of fluorides into the melt, but I'm not prepared to deal with molten fluorides.

Starting with anhydrous borax. Wash in piranha to eliminate iron and graphite. Use titanium electrode Might work.

@ScrapScience

Жыл бұрын

Dehydrating the borax first is definitely a good option, along with a titanium cathode. I'm thinking a more inert crucible might also be ideal. I'm worried piranha solution might react with boron though. Concentrated nitric acid is oxidising enough to react with boron, so I find it likely that piranha might do the same? I suppose it requires some testing.

there is no failure, only success (progression)

@Jkauppa

Жыл бұрын

that explosion was boron taking in moisture (hydrogen explosion)

@Jkauppa

Жыл бұрын

inert atmosphere electrolysis

@Jkauppa

Жыл бұрын

electromagnetic separation, mass spectrometry filtering

@Jkauppa

Жыл бұрын

sodium/lithium will also explode if not in inert gas/liquid

@Jkauppa

Жыл бұрын

chromium? oxidize (burn) them

Yay!

Electrolysis isn't the way to go, boron is a relatively poor conductor and you will end up with boron oxide on the positive electrode. An easy way to isolate it would be to start with boric acid then react that with magnesium in excess to create magnesium boride, then react this with dilute hydrochloric acid to form borane, then decompose that with heat

i think it was really cool