Purification of Copper Sulfate

In this instructable I am going to show you how to purify copper sulfate. The reason that I am doing this is because the type you get at the hardware store for cleaning drains has a fair amount of impurities in it. The stuff I got has about two percent impurities in it. This may not seem like very much, but when you are doing precise chemistry experiments it is really to impure to be used directly.

Now, there are several ways of purifying this stuff, but I am going to show you how to do it by recrystallization. The reason that I am going to show you this way is because it is the easiest way to do it in a home laboratory. The way this works is that all of the impurities will sink to the bottom of the beaker. the copper sulfate however will stay in solution and as the water evaporates the copper sulfate will crystalize on the seed crystal. This means that we can collect the crystals without getting the inpurities that have sank to the bottom.

DISCLAIMER: Copper Sulfate is dangerous. It can be harmful to you and can also be harmful to aquatic life if it gets is spilled and gets into water tables. 

Step 1 What You Need

Here are the tools/lab equipment you need:

1. Beaker (I used a 400ml beaker but you could use a larger one if you want.)
2. Spoon or Magnetic Stirrer
3. Fan

Here are the materials I used:

1. Copper Sulfate
2. Water
3. Popsicle Stick
4. Thread

And that's all you need.

Comments

[rahulk110057]

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[nurdee1]

Thanks, I am glad you like it. I looked at that web site and it looks like they have some pretty neat experiments. I will try some of them. Here is another neat site.

http://sites.google.com/site/nurdrage/chemistry-experiments