Thread 156/11

Removal of Salt from Iron

In Chemistry we are required to perform an experiment using an electrolytic technique to remove the salt from a chlorine saturated iron artifact. Would anyone be able to provide information on how to go about this, such as what electrolyte to use and why?

William Mitchell
- NSW, Australia
2002
publicly reply to William Mitchell

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2002

I have heard of using electrolytic techniques to try to reverse the rusting of artifacts--that is, not to just stop further rusting, but to try to convert the rust that is on the piece back to metal in the original form and place. Possibly some museum site or curators site would have information on that.

But what you want to do sounds to me more like electrocleaning.In that case you would make the item you wanted to clean the cathode, and use steel sheets as the anodes in a highly alkaline solution at about 180 °F.. Although you could perhaps formulate one yourself from caustic soda ⇦liquid caustic soda in bulk on Amazon [affil link] , washing soda ⇦ on eBay or Amazon [affil links] , detergents, and silicates, any distributor of plating supplies can offer you a packaged proprietary electrocleaning solution.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
publicly reply to Ted Mooney

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