How you can produce Iron dust from Iron metal?

[Master_Chief]

If you have about 15 gramms of Iron Metal, how you can create from this, about 15 gramms of Iron dust? (I can accept that a small quantity will ''disapear'', durring the presidure) Thanks.

[RyanJ]

If you have about 15 gramms of Iron Metal, how you can create from this, about 15 gramms of Iron dust? (I can accept that a small quantity will ''disapear'', durring the presidure) Thanks.

 

I guess you could use one of those high power grinders to do it for you... not shure how good it would work though.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Prime-Evil]

Good question. You would most likely end up with iron oxide powder. Maybe grind wrought iron in an oxygen free environment and then use a magnet to separate the iron from the other particles. A chemical rather than mechanical process would be interesting though. Perhaps some sort galvanic thing so you get a bunch of iron ions disolved in an acid, and then maybe drop the temperature quickly and have the iron precipitate without growing into large grains. Perhaps you could spray it the way they make instant coffee. Find out how engineers make powder for "powder metalurgy".

.

[woelen]

The usual method is filing or drilling for medium fine powder. A chemical method, which produces ultrafine iron powder (pyrophoric!) is to make ferrous oxalate and heat this. The ferrous oxalate then decomposes, giving iron metal as a very fine powder, and carbon dioxide.

 

Ferrous oxalate can be made by adding oxalic acid to a computed amount of Fe(OH)2, suspended in water. The solution, this obtained, is evaporated to dryness and what remains is ferrous oxalate.

However, this procedure is not easy to perform at all outside a lab. You need perfectly oxygen-free operation. Fe(OH)2 is VERY prone to oxidation by air and during the heating of the ferrous oxalate, one also has to assure that absolutely no air (oxygen) is allowed to come in contact with the powder.