Create Heavy Water?

[Klein]

I have been told that you can pump water over the surface of magnesium and create heavy water. I am hoping someone can help me understand this process. I need to create 10 lb. to 14 lb. per gallon water using well water in open ponds, catch basins, or tanks. I need the process to be low cost. We are also needing thousands of Gallons. Thanks for any help!!!!!

[Leader Bee]

Are you looking to create D2O?

 

It doesn't work like that. Cheap and easy won't happen and it's why it was there was only one D20 plant in (switzerland?) during WWII - it isn't cheap or easy.

Edited November 1, 2011 by Leader Bee

[insane_alien]

pure D2O is not 10lbs per gallon (9.2384 lbs/gal). which means you need to to use tritiated heavy water which is going to be quite radioactive.

 

have you considered using something other than water?

Edited November 1, 2011 by insane_alien

[John Cuthber]

"I have been told that you can pump water over the surface of magnesium and create heavy water."

You were misinformed.

[insane_alien]

"I have been told that you can pump water over the surface of magnesium and create heavy water."

You were misinformed.

 

I think this misunderstanding could come from the fact that the magnesium will react with the water and the resultant magnesium hydroxide solution will be denser than plain water. not heavy water though.

[John Cuthber]

Since magnesium hydroxide is practically insoluble measuring the change in density would be quite difficult.

[insane_alien]

ah fair point.

 

3

[J.C.MacSwell]

pure D2O is not 10lbs per gallon (9.2384 lbs/gal). which means you need to to use tritiated heavy water which is going to be quite radioactive.

 

have you considered using something other than water?

 

regular old water is 10 lb per regular old gallon

 

I have been told that you can pump water over the surface of magnesium and create heavy water. I am hoping someone can help me understand this process. I need to create 10 lb. to 14 lb. per gallon water using well water in open ponds, catch basins, or tanks. I need the process to be low cost. We are also needing thousands of Gallons. Thanks for any help!!!!!

 

What do you need it for?

[CaptainPanic]

What do you need it for?

+1 for the smartest question in this thread so far.

 

There are a million ways to adjust the density of a liquid... and it all depends on what you need it for.

[insane_alien]

regular old water is 10 lb per regular old gallon

 

I was assuming US gallons as that would be the most likely considering gallons are still common over there.

[John Cuthber]

Unless and until Klein gets back here and explains what his first post meant there's not a lot of point in continuing this thread.

[John Cuthber]

"heavy water is water with deuterium oxide in it"

Not really, it is deuterium oxide.

"Deuterium unfortunatelyis heavy hydrogen and can be quite dangerous to manufacture."

Nor particularly.

"In order to gainhigh-purity deuterium, electrolysis of heavy water with the D2O concentrationof more than 99% is usually used. "

Not much help, sine the OP is trying to get heavy water, not use it up.

 

So basically to getheavy water, you need to get a dustbin full of water, electrolysis the shizmout of it, and then on the... cathode you should get your deuterium. Once youhave this, you can add it to water to make purer heavy water."

nope.

" And heavy water isonly used in so far as to MAKE deuterium, which thanks to the paper below hasthe following applications:"

No, D2O is used for plenty of things without conversion to D2.

 

 

So, as I said,

Unless and until Klein gets back here and explains what his first post meant there's not a lot of point in continuing this thread.

Edited November 4, 2011 by John Cuthber

[Klein]

Thank you for the many reply. To be more specific in need to make "Brine" for drilling. Most Brine is made by pumping ordinary water deep into the earth into a specific salt formation and then pumping it to the surface. the salt water is more dense and thus also it is heavier. I am told that it can weigh as much as 7 to 10 lbs. Seems quite heavy for salt water???? The concept of using Magnesium is new to me?? I believe it would some how change the chemical structure of water?? Ok guys Dumb this one up for me!!!!I'm not a chemist and need to keep it simple....

[Pantaz]

Thank you for the many reply. To be more specific in need to make "Brine" for drilling. Most Brine is made by pumping ordinary water deep into the earth into a specific salt formation and then pumping it to the surface. the salt water is more dense and thus also it is heavier. I am told that it can weigh as much as 7 to 10 lbs. Seems quite heavy for salt water???? The concept of using Magnesium is new to me?? I believe it would some how change the chemical structure of water?? Ok guys Dumb this one up for me!!!!I'm not a chemist and need to keep it simple....

Well, this has been one heck of a miscommunication, eh?

 

Take a quick look at the Wiki page for "Heavy Water" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water

[hypervalent_iodine]

Most Brine is made by pumping ordinary water deep into the earth into a specific salt formation and then pumping it to the surface.

 

Not necessarily. Brine simply refers to a saturated solution of some kind of salt; typically that salt is NaCl (the stuff in table salt). You can make brine just by mixing crystalline salt into a quantity of water.

 

 

the salt water is more dense and thus also it is heavier. I am told that it can weigh as much as 7 to 10 lbs. Seems quite heavy for salt water????

 

The water itself isn't heavier. You now have a solution containing a mixture of compounds. The density (i.e. mass per unit volume) will obviously change when you start doing this. Whether 7 to 10 lbs is 'too heavy' is impossible to say, since you've not told us how much volume you're referring to. If that were, say, 10 lbs for 1 mL of water, then yes, I would question the information you're being told.

 

 

The concept of using Magnesium is new to me?? I believe it would some how change the chemical structure of water?? Ok guys Dumb this one up for me!!!!I'm not a chemist and need to keep it simple....

 

The chemical structure of water doesn't change at all; it's still H₂O. What changes is that the water now forms hydration cages around the solvated ions. Oxygen and hydrogen have differing electronegativities, with oxygen being more electronegative than hydrogen. Loosely, what this means is that oxygen is able to pull electron density towards it better. When we have a look at the structure of water (image from here):

 

 

What we have is a sort of electron tug-of-war. Because O is more electronegative than H, it is able to pull electron density away from the H's. Because electrons are negatively charged and because the oxygen now has a higher amount of electron density around it means that the oxygen atom has a partial negative charge. Similarly, the hydrogen, which has had electrons pulled away from it somewhat, now has a partial positive charge. We say that such bonds are polarised, because the electron density and thus the charge is bias towards one or another side of the bond.

 

When you dissolve salts like NaCl into water, the salt will separate into ions (charged molecules); for NaCl, we have Na⁺ and Cl^-. The water, which we've said has a partial negative charge around the oxygen centre and partial positive charge around the hydrogens, will then arrange around these ions to try and balance out the charges. In our example, the partially negatively charged oxygen of the water molecule will arrange around the positively charged sodium atom and the slightly positively charged hydrogens will arrange around the negatively charged chlorine. The structures that they form are called hydration cages or solvation shells, among others (there are a few names I've heard of) and they are the reason why salt dissolves. They look a little something like this:

 

 

(from here)

 

(from here)

 

 

As you can see, the water itself hasn't changed structure at all. Now, I'm assuming here that you are wanting to dissolve some sort of magnesium salt, rather than simply wanting to throw magnesium metal in water. This being the case, the concept would be very similar if you were trying to make a salt solution with some sort of magnesium salt. The only thing that's changing is the identity of the ions you're solvating.

Edited November 8, 2011 by hypervalent_iodine

[John Cuthber]

Is the brine you are talking about using for drilling something like the "mud" used in oil drilling?

Something like this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drilling_fluid