Make Copper Sulfate from Copper and Sulfuric acid (3 ways)
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- We make copper sulfate from copper and sulfuric acid using two chemical methods and one electrochemical method.
Copper does not directly react with sulfuric acid so some form of oxidant is needed. Hydrogen peroxide and nitric acid are excellent oxidants and the first two methods demonstrate this. The nitric acid method however produces toxic nitrogen dioxide gas so you'll need to perform this one outside or in a fumehood.
Because both chemical methods are rather expensive. A very cheap electrochemical method can be performed by running a current through two copper electrodes immersed in sulfuric acid. The copper is converted to copper ions at the positive electrode and hydrogen gas is formed at the negative electrode.
However if the electrodes are placed side by side then the copper ions will diffuse to the negative electrode and get converted back into copper. This is wasteful as you've used power to accomplish nothing. So the better way is to separate both by gravity with the positive electrode at the bottom. The denser solution of copper sulfate will remain near the bottom and thus increase efficiency.
As a side note, the electrochemical method is actually very expensive if you use batteries as your power source. The charge on a battery generates a comparatively small quantity of total copper sulfate compared to the same cost of chemicals for the chemical methods. The cheapest way is to use a DC power supply. The cost of municipal electricity is very small compared to the cost of batteries and chemicals.
I've done the second and third method of producing copper sulphate.
Second method (nitric acid) was the best way of making copper sulphate.
The crystal are amazing
No!
Who is telling these lies? They need to learn chemistry
I love the color of dissolved copper sulphate. So pretty
me too
Eat them
hehe, thanks!
As for the sign, we kinda like having it go through progressive phases of disfigurement as the videos progress. Printing new signs is troublesome but the wear and tear shows just how hard-core our experiments are :)
im in 9th grade, all of my classmates only use vocabulary used in the jersey shore. i am compleatly souronded by half, no, not even quarter wits. it is realy nice to listen to people who are smart. this girl asked me if you could swim up a tornado. and yes, she was a prep whos mind never leaves her cell phone.
Not sure if anyone monitors this channel anymore but I wanted to say that the electrolysis trick is brilliant.
I make 900mls in a few hours this way, I added to your method by making several of the anode coils a head of time and when one gets eaten away I stick another one down in and let that one run. I continue to do this until chrisals start forming in the bottom of the flask. The yield is crazy high!
So easy and fast.
As for power supply I now use an ATX power supply, using ALL of the red (5Vdc) tied together.
I use a cathode that I made out of a piece of 3/4in copper pipe that I split down the middle and open up like a sheet of copper. Of coarse I leave a stem on the other end. Its real easy with a faber wheel on a dremel.
there is SOME small amount of oxides that form on the cathode that will settle out. Its nano particulate so its damn near impossible to filter. But its easy to get rid of by letting it settle out over night and simply decant off. The brownish read particulate sticks to the bottom of the flask or jar and can be cleaned off with scrubbing. I rip a few drops of Sulfuric acid on the bottom, swirl it around and rinse it off clean as crystal.
Im very impressed at how fast and easy the electrolysis method is I could literally run enough in 2 hours to do a bunch of PCB;s or copper plating.
Awesome, good to hear it worked out for ya.
NurdRage im having a crazy hard time crystallizing iron III however.
it turns to a brown sludge more than anything.. followed your iron three to the letter.
it always comes out much darker than expected.
some of the finer particulate looks like fine crystals sort of like how aluminium chloride falls out of solution.
but i never get large crystals.
i need it in solid form for an intercalation process so i will use it as is i guess,
im such a noob :)
oh and I changed the copper sulfate trick some more.
I slit a piece of 1/2 inch copper tube long ways and hammer it into a flat rectangle, then i take a piece of 10 gauge copper wire and fold the short edge of the rectangle over the wire a couple of times and hammer it down
then i roll the rectangle up into a spiral. it allows you to put a massive amount of copper in the mix and walk away.
it sounds complicated but it really isnt, it takes maybe 5 minutes
Clown Whisper Ferric chloride is difficult to crystalize, you need an excess of hydrochloric acid. Some sources of hydrochloric acid are not concentrated enough. Try adding more before crystallizing. Keep in mind that proper ferric chloride crystals are very dark brown. Almost black in bulk. Crushed powdered crystals are yellow. But they are all ferric chloride and dissolve easily. So don't worry if your stuff comes out looking like crud, as long as it works later for whatever you intend to use it for. The stuff in my video was carefully prepared and shown under bright light. So it tends to look better than the average sample. I made countless crappy sludge samples before i filmed that one.
NurdRage Thanks man, thats a big help mentally for me, as i am so new at these processes and don't always know what to expect.
NurdRage perhaps you can help me with something
whenever i do electrolysis with copper electrodes i get a precipitate of a brick red substance on the cathode after a good long while
i did a large scale production of copper sulfate today and retrieved a few grams of this and placed it in a beaker. i washed it with sulfuric acid then di water. i then tried to oxidize it using hydrogen peroxide. i then added HCL to see if it was copper, but to my surprise it instantly turned pitch black as it dissolved back into solution.
its been 12 hours and it remains in solution as black as ink.
a drop on a glass slide shows a yellow cast to it
i get this residue every time i use copper electrodes
im sure it is brought about as the copper II sulfate level gets closer to the cathode but what it is i cant figure out. i thought that it was a nanoparticulate of copper metal but obviously its not or it would have converted to copper chloride not black.
i have heard other people mention this happening to them as well.
your thoughts???
For those who want to use 3rd method: I've used 40% sulfuric acid, 12AWG copper wire, and a PC power supply, as it has variety of voltages. Reaction works at 3.3V (between orange and black wire of the power supply, black is negatove). Works great :)
I DID THIS IN MY SCIENCE CLASS :D BRINGS BACK MEMORIES :'D I THINK I STILL HAVE THOSE CRYSTLES
@keimori12
Long explanation: from a quantum mechanical process where the orbiting electrons around the copper nucleus can jump between unoccupied positions in the d-orbital positions. The ligand field splitting from an copper-aqua (water) complex has the same energy as the reddish region of light, the absorption of red then gives a blue color to solutions of copper ions. This is basic 2nd year inorganic chemistry at the university level.
simple explanation: it just does, get over it.
:)
Suggestion. Put copper wire in dilute sulphuric acid and let it stand a week or so. The air will react to oxidize the copper which the sulfuric acid will dissolve. Don't use old broze coins. Beside destroying collectables the coins will create a mixture of copper salts and salts of other metasl. Best, discarded electrical wire ends and copper pipes.
Ive done it that way,you just need one big cut of pipe
Your videos are always so interesting! Watching them makes me want to take more chemistry courses so I could understand these processes better.
I've done this with sulfuric acid and #2 copper pipe using the electrochemical process. A new side note I learned is if you were to dip steel into the copper sulfate solution it will be lightly plated with copper. I did this to a hammer over a year ago and it is still shiny copper to this day.
absolutely, but changing the arrangement of the electrodes is easier and cleaner.
Some barrier materials may dissolve in acid.
words cannot descirbe the amazingness of your genius.. that crystal was a beast!
Alright, thank you! I got it now!
For me, in Malaysia. We accept both American and British English , but we are more into British English.
In my Chemistry text book , it is written in sulphate.
Anyway, keep it up! I love your videos , they are very educational. unlike my teacher who no capable of explaining anything to their student.
yeah just wash them, it will dissolve a little but you only need to rinse for a few seconds, then shake off the water and let it dry. You'll lose very little.
for anyone who needs to know for any stoichiometric calculations, the crystal formed is
Cu(SO4) o 4H2O or Copper (II) Sulfate Pentahydrate
Yes, you can use it for that.
That should work fine for anything that doesn't call for concentrated sulfuric acid. Battery acid is just a 40% solution of sulfuric acid, which is usually 95% when sold as "concentrated."
thanks.
I felt it necessary to reupload this one with the clarification since 2000 comments of "HEY WAIT A MINUTE...." is not fun.... I learned my lesson from the leidenfrost video. :)
first find the density (measure a known quantity and then measure its mass) and then consult a table that lists the known density for various concentrations of sulfuric acid. Those tables can be found online.
i discovered the third method by accident. I was trying to make a H2+O2 generator, and used copper to get the electricity into a sodium sulfate solution i made. Na2So4 and H2O. this began to make copper sulfate, i noticed, and i then made another version of my generator just for the purpose
Very useful, this is exactly what I was looking for, I needed the copper sulfate for copperization, and I was obtaining it by producing CuO and then making it react with diluted sulfuric acid, a simple but a little longer process than yours, actually, I do what I do because I have no concentrated sulfuric acid :-( Good job.
Thank you so much!! I used your method to make copper sulphate for electro-plating. Strong and shiny plating was the result! Much better than copper acetate.
nothing better than a video from 12 years ago, man, how time passes
the proportion listed will react away all the nitrates to oxidize the copper. so you're left with copper sulfate mixed with excess sulfuric acid.
@sapdog12
just means your acid wasn't perfectly pure, it's not as bad the situation looks, but requires a bit of work to recover:
Pour off the acid and get the white powder, add water to it to redissolve it, the white powder is copper sulfate, just in it's anhydrous form. The solution should turn blue now, let it evaporate instead of boiling and you should be able to get blue copper sulfate crystals.
The black acid can be used to make more copper sulfate, just won't be as pure.
Makes a great stump remover. Drill 5 (five) 1" (2.54cm) holes in offending stump; pack 1/2 full with CuSO4. fill hole slowly with water.
The CuSO4 greatly accelerates the decomposition process; this makes the tree stump much easier to get out of the ground without using TNT and/or a large pickup truck with a log chain and/or other implements that might be looked upon with alarm by the neighbors when you show up in your front yard and start using them.
Yes, I learned this the hard way!
CUSO4 looks sooo cool aqueous. The color is awesome!
no, fumes being microscopic particles given off from the substance, as much as preventing it from entering the system, either via a gas mask type hood, or a clean film/mesh that filters particulates.
most straightforward way is to react copper with acetic and hydrogen peroxide. i'm not sure if the electric method would work for acetic acid without producing unwanted byproducts.
Keep in mind, it is *impossible* to chemically make sulfate ions from acetic acid. It's not going to happen.
You must use sulfuric acid.
So how would you explain electrolisys pure copper anode and cathode in hot 10% acetic acid solution? It turn light blue instantly.
@@Fosgen copper acetate probably
And you can get copper metal from pipe and wire, even more readily available than copper oxide.
i tried this using the electrolosis method. i did not use the acids, i used water and it worked successfully
I'm making copper acetate right now with the electrochemicly method as you showed. Thanks!
I'm currently making CuSO4 via copper, sulfuric acid and air. It takes longer than actively oxidizing the copper, (In a large flat contain with plenty of surface area a few days.) but I find that it uses up all the acid and I don't need any additional chemicals or equipment. Best of all it also works when making copper acetate from clear vinegar.
you it through filter paper. the dilute acid solution will pass through and the crystals remain in the paper.
Look at my sodium nitrate videos for an example of the filtering process.
Thanks man you have my good wishes you will reach 1 million soon
If You heat the dry blue powder, it turns white. The white substance is CuSO4. If You then let it cool down and allow it to stand in the air, each CuSO4 molecule binds five water molecules from the air, and the substance turns back blue. The blue is the pentahydrate form.
Sorry, I'm not English native speaker.
And I'm 17.
So greetings from Serbia, looking forward for your next videos!
Thank you for sharing your expertise. I appreciate the time you've taken to help people like me learn. I hope you have a beautiful day 😸
one day a school a few years back we were evaporating water from a copper sulfate solution and when we checked on it in a few days we had one solid copper sulfate crystal about 3cm long it was really cool
1. Copper metal is easier to find than copper oxide.
2. Did you neglect the presence of an excess of sulfuric acid?
Awesome, straight forward, informative and easy to understand for people like me who are just beginning to delve into the world of electro biochemistry! Thankyou and I would rate with a double AAAA++++
@sapdog
mine is research grade, but i don't think makershed's acid would be the problem.
might be something else, like a small amount of organic material, i wouldn't worry too much about it. the copper sulfate can be purified by recrystallization, so even drain cleaner acid will still be fine for you.
the explanation is far more complicated than i can cram into 500 characters. I reccomend getting a textbook on inorganic chemistry to answer this question.
It would be nice if you read the video description and checked the link....
@ThePhDChemist please research "overpotential" and "reduction potential" in the context of electrochemistry.
well i bought sulfuric acid as electrolyte for batteries and it is 30 percent. i watched on the wiki, battery acid is from 29 to 32 percents. so according to the denssities, you need to boil off 3/4 of the liquid to get concentrated sulfuric acid.i did this and that acid was strong enough to make nitric acid.
@lukeluzicka it was an editing error. The original script for the nitric acid video read: "only nitric acid will dissolve copper *and produce nitrogen dioxide gas*" unfortunately that last piece of dialogue was cut off accidentally during editing.
@sconesbi let the jar sit until crystals form on their own. This may take some time (days-weeks) once they do, carefully pour the liquid, and not the crystals, into another jar, now drop the seed crystal in. It won't melt and will grow bigger/faster than other crystals. My incredibly large crystals in the video took a lot more work and a few months to grow.
If you really need to ask, specifically, if drinking concentrated sulfuric acid, an acid capable of eating through various metals and even non-metals, is safe....
please drink it.
Copper chloride complexes are green. Aqueous copper ions are blue.
Using nitric acid as an oxidizer can be verry efficient. Today I made copper sulfate using 75ml 6 mol/l sulphuric acid and adding 10ml 6 mol/l nitric acid. 20 grams of copper metal are desolved using this method, a maximum of 50ml of extra nitric acid can be added to help desolving, don't add to much nitric acid otherwise copper nitrate will be formed during crystalisation. The theoratical yield is allmost 63 grams, practical you could get near 40 grams of copper(II) sulfate.
@bernie2du
It'll make copper sulfate, but i'm not sure if it will be pure enough for electroplating. I've heard electroplating require very high purity stuff and impure chemicals ruin the plate
Also i personally wouldn't want to deal with little bits of lead in my stuff.
But if you do try it and it works then post a video and share the knowledge, :)
This is a part of my college pracs ! It's so cool
Man I love old nurdrage
You were dehydrating it. Copper sulfate is a hydrate, which mean it has water molecules trapped inside gaps in its crystal lattice. It is actually more stable in this hydrated form than in an anhydrous form. Reintroducing water allows it to rehydrate, and go to a more stable state. As such, it releases energy in the form of heat, which burned your hand.
You can rinse the copper sulfate with ethanol to get rid of the acid. Worked for me
This was a really helpful video for the assignment i'm working on. Thankyou!
That blue crystal looks so nice!
It can dry them, it can cause burns, it can leave marks and a lot other things. If you wash your hands, no problem.
My favourite shade of blue...and such beautiful crystals...!
another way is to heat concentrated H2SO4 with the copper. This will yield a white powder CuSO4 anhydrous. Add in water and boil enough to dissolve it into a navy blue liquid, filter it and the blue crystals will grow before your eyes. Anhydrous CuSO4 attracting its first H2O will expand a lot and can break glass vessels. Also boiling conc. H2SO4 does release some SO3 gas.
it would be better, but still not as good as nitric acid. Decomposition of the peroxide still occurs due to catalyzation by the copper.
the crystals look so pretty
Good vid as always. Copper sulfate crystals look neat.
I love chemistry and it's chemical reactions very much . Thanks for this video
bubble sulfur dioxide into a solution of copper hydroxide or stirred copper oxide, it'll disproportionate into copper metal and copper sulfate.
oh, it formed a blue liquid though. but i dumped it and used the method with the hydrogen peroxide. ill tell you how it worked when its done boiling. i made 125ml of it and it boiling right now. it is around 50ml at the moment
how do you hope to make copper sulfate, if you don't have a source of sulfate ions? hydrogen peroxide and acetic acid do not produce sulfate ions.
I specifically made the experiment with an excess of sulfuric acid and copper to drive the equilibrium to toward copper sulfate and destroy all nitrate ions. Any remaining nitrate would be negligible.
Wow I love that blue color it's so...cool words can't describe how awesome it is
Crystal Blue Persuasion just played in my head...
Thanks, this will really help me turn my coppers into copper sulfates.
this video has subtitles, you can turn those on and turn off the sound.
I went to home depot and got this stuff called ZEP root kit in the plumbing section. It is pure copper sulfate for 12.00 for 2 pounds!
It's quite easy to remember how to get bigger crystals formed in a reaction
"the slower the reaction proceeds, the greater the resultant crystals", because if the ions don't have the time to build up a big crystal they crystallizes right where they are resultiong in many crystal-nuclei.
(I'm not a nativ english speaker, so pls don't mind if i messed up the grammar or the spelling)
Also it's good to have a saturated solution, but not over-saturated, because in an over-saturated solution, little crystals are pushed out from the solution all over the place.
You can use baking soda as well. it just takes longer. and any sulfuric acid thats generated gets neutralized immediately.
Still works I think. Turns blue like yours.
i am trying the 3rd way right now and have a nice sky blue solution at the bottom of my reaction vessle so I guess I am winning. I am using an old atx powersupply that was moded to power it. if you buy the solid core 12 or 16 gauge house wire from the hardware store you can get a section and only strip part of it for the posative electrode that goes to the bottom, then ya don't need to buy a little scrap of tubing or any thing.
Specifically Thanks for all methods
Those crystals are beautiful!
A forth and more industrial way is: take copper metal and boil in conc. sulfuric acid. this will make nearly anhydrous coppersulfate. this will be diluted in hot water then filtered. this way the CuSO4-5H2O will be pure and clean.
Love you videos keep them coming… These crystals look amazing, And the usefulness of them is a must.
From what I have gathered from your video, and reading online. For efficiency you boil it down to collect, and reuse the acid. And use the remaining Copper sulphate to make more. Or you boil down to supersaturation leaving some water if you just want to produce crystals. Which is useful as well. And the crystals look bad a**.
Thanks again. Extremely informative. Well laid out videos awesome. If I am not mistaken the copper sulphate Breaks down at a 1010 C. So depending what I would want to do I have to watch the boiling temperature of water, And the Max temperature for the copper sulphate.
Got it no matter how saturated the solution, it will stay Enssolutions. Until you remove the acid.
Great video but I must write that blue crystals aren't CuSO4, CuSO4 crystals are white.
Blue crystals are CuSO4*5H2O.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
i'm glad someone got it :)
thanks, I bought it at autozone for lead car batteries but it didn't give a % just a specific gravity and did what NurdRage suggested to find the molarity, and I have yet to try and make it highly concentrated because I do not have a real safe set up to do these kind of experiments. If only I had the money haha.
Thanks to you, Nile red and the other guys. I cee common household items in a new light. And I am currently trying to make a lot of Things, From the bottom up. Starting from wood ash science manure and so on. Tank you for helping a spark my interest in science and survival science.🧪🧪👍👍
Nice color and crystal structure
What would happen if I was to try to neutralize the acid with baking soda, before crystallizing ? Would it change the copper sulfate properties ? Thanks, great video as always.
@aCagedApe
hmm.. never tried that myself, i'm not sure if it's good enough for that purpose. But give it a go and report your results!
Can you do some videos dedicated to making crystals?
what is the difference between Copper Sulfate and the Copper Sulfate pentahydrate
@aCagedApe
Spongy copper, It's still copper, but has so may holes and is so loose and porous that it looks like a sponge rather than a metal. just filter it off.
@uaintwright Its always easier to buy stuff. I like making stuff sometimes to demonstrate the science. Also the principles learned can be applied to other experiments where you can't buy the chemicals.
awesome, Those huge cristals are sweet.
I am unable to filter off the copper sulfate due to the ability of sulfuric acid being able to eat through my filter paper. :)
I guess you could use fiber glass filters instead since concentrated sulfuric acid can readily oxidize cellulose (and other organic materials). But that's my guess. I could be wrong.
your solution is way to strong! it should be very dilute
Clown Whisper once the water boils off the solution is mainly sulfuric acid
Clown Whisper can I use higher voltage
If youre not concerned with recoving the acid, you could neutralise it.
my friend, maybe you should try it with dilute sulfuric acid.
I think you missed the part where i said "for those interested in the chemistry"
I know it's nit picky, but when making peroxymonosulfuric acid or piranha solution you ALWAYS add the peroxide to the acid, not the other way around. The reason is due to the fact that as the peroxymonosulfuric acid forms, if there is a high concentration of hydrogen peroxide it can form a potentially explosive mixture. Adding peroxide to the acid ensures that the concentration of peroxide is low and is quickly consumed and sulfuric acid is in excess. I know with small volumes it mostly doesn't matter, but I work in a lab where it's not uncommon to need to make 500ml of piranha at a time and I can't tell you how many grad students have done it the other way and ended up with sputtering and small explosions. It's not good.