Sunday 20 September 2015

Synthesis of Cu(CH3COO)2 copper(II)acetate

I recently used 2 methods to produce Sodium 2 acetate at home. Mostly people use:
 
H2O2+Cu+CH3COOH

which is slow and can lead to impurities of other copper salts, due to acid treatment of H2O2. If you have pure H2O2, then you are good to go, but thats not that easy to have at home.

An easier way is to obtain some insolube copper compound. I had some Copper hydroxide from electrolysis and some copper oxide, which I obtained as powder, by burning some of the copper Hydroxide. For the acetic acid, take some vinegar. Note, it should say in the ingredients; "acetic acid, water" and not the other types which had added salt and sugar in it. as we dont want impurities. If you want a much faster reaction, then boil down half of the vinegar. Do it in a ventilated area, as you dont want the acetic acid vapours burning your lungs (as they did mine). I tested the two compounds separately as I wanted to see the difference in reaction rates.


These were the two reactions. the darker solution being reacted with CuO, and the lighter blue one with Cu(OH)2. I dont know why the solutions are having different hues, but im guessing it has to do with the water molecules in the acetate. 
I later mixed the two and added more, concentrated and hot acetic acid on to it, till most of the compounds had reacted. it resulted in this:
 btw the bottle shrunk due to the boiling acetic acid. After leaving in the sun for 4 days, I got these crystals,