Element Isolation

[RomanianChemist]

Hello Everyone,

 

I'm new to these forums so I'll introduce myself. I have an avid interest in chemistry, but I am only in high school, so my experiments are rather restricted.

 

I have found that I really enjoy isolating elements from compounds I have lying around the house, or from the chemistry set I just received for Christmas. My project yesterday was a smashing success, and I isolated several grams of pure Iodine. My process was as follows: KI + HCl --> KCl + HI || HI + H2O2 --> I2 + H2O. Then once I had filtered off the precipitated Iodine, I heated it and re-condensed the violet Iodine vapor on a cold vessel, and scraped it off.

 

My next project for today, is to extract Boron from Borax. This is where I have questions. I did some research, and if I'm right, I can mix hydrochloric acid and Borax to get Boric acid, which I can extract by exploiting its low solubility in cold water. Then I heat the boric acid until it decomposes into Boron oxide. Finally, I can then react the Boron oxide with magnesium to get pure Boron, fun stuff, eh?

So my first question is, could someone write the equations for all of those reactions?

My second Question: what are some cool, fun or interesting element isolations YOU have done, using easily acquired chemicals?

[hermanntrude]

one piece of advice. ALWAYS read MSDS documents for every substance you plan to use. You can easily find these by typing (for instance) "boron MSDS" into google.

 

as for your proposed reaction I have no idea if or how it will work