New Way of Making a Ferrofluid. Costs Less Than 3$!!!

Intro: New Way of Making a Ferrofluid. Costs Less Than 3$!!!

Ferrofluid - a substance that's liquid under normal conditions, but turns solid in the presence of a magnetic field.

I found new way of making home made ferrofluid and I want to share it with you guys.

The advantage of my project is cost. It's way cheaper than all other methods online and it is indeed very simple.

My ferrofluid consist only two inexpensive parts, you only need old record tapes and a bottle of acetone!

STEP 1: Materials

You will only need ACETONE, record TAPES, cooking OIL and MAGNET.

---500ml/16 fl. oz. Acetone. (1.50$)---
Acetone is high flameable be careful with it. You can get it at department store. It cost around 2$.

---10 music tapes or 4 video tapes. (0.00$)---
Use old music or video records tapes.You can get them virtually in any basement...

---5ml/0.2 fl. oz. Cooking oil. (0.00$)---
Every house has a secret room...The Kitchen...

---1 big strong magnet. (0.50$)---
You can get it from any old speaker in your house. Just take it apart and use it!

WARNING: IT IS VERY SIMPLE!
REAL WARNING: ACETONE IS HIGH FLAMEABLE AND NOISOME! BE CAREFUL WITH IT!

STEP 2: Prepare Tapes

Tape:
The tape itself is actually very simple. It consists of a thin plastic base material, and bonded to this base is a coating of ferric oxide powder. The oxide is normally mixed with a binder to attach it to the plastic, and it also includes some sort of dry lubricant to avoid wearing out the recorder.

Ferric and iron oxides:
Iron oxide (FeO) is the red rust we commonly see. Ferric oxide (Fe2O3) is another oxide of iron. Maghemite or gamma ferric oxide are common names for the substance.

More info how tape work:
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cassette1.htm

Procedure:
We need separate Ferric oxide from plastic tapes. Acetone will melt binder and separate Ferric oxide. But first we need to smash and break tapes!

STEP 3: Melt Binder and Separate Fe2O3

Melting:
Find large enough bowl. Put all tapes in and fill bowl with acetone. Wait few hours. You should close bowl with something to keep acetone from vaporising.

STEP 4: Collect Ferric Oxide

Collecting ferric oxide:
Get a magnet. Roll it with paper or plastic bag (it is needed to separate ferric oxide from a magnet easily). Collect all your Fe2O3. Let ir dry.

Repeat step 3:
If not all oxide has separated from a tape you can repeat procedure with acetone few time to get a better effect.

STEP 5: Make a Substance

Mix with oil:
For 1ml of ferric oxide you need 1/3ml cooking oil.
Mix it. If it's to viscous fill a drop of water and detergent and mix everything again. It will help oil to mix with oxide.

STEP 6: Overview

Magnetize ferro fluid:
Don't forget to strongly magnetize your ferro fluid.
Use biger magnets. Large ferrite magnets are better than small strong neodymium magnets.

Overview:
Bravo! You have made medium quality ferrofluid!

Comments

[BennyB4]

You can also get ferric oxide from sand by using a magnet. I have also heard you can get it out of cereal that advertises that it is high in iron, but have never tried it myself.

[ArfaidaL]

500 ml of acetone right? To have a greater effect in stripping off the tape binder, i used 530 ml of acetone. But still, it has no effect. You will only observe the effects in 1-3 weeks or beyond that. Wait for a few hours??? Just Wow!!! How can u possibly post this? To torture others?

[BennyB4]

or your acetone was weak and contained additives (useless extra stuff they put in to make your nails better when you use the acetone to clean off nail polish).

[Zujus]

You might have had a tape with a different metal coating. What did it say in the package? Also the plastic part might be different too, look for old tapes!

[JoelW66]

i use scissors to scrape it off of the plastic its pretty fast once you get the feel for i t

just cut one end of the tape try to have all the tape to one side this will make process faster after youve collected the brown looking part of the tape youre going to want to crumble it with your fingers get as fine as you can

also peroxide and salt will rust steel wool

[ArfaidaL]

Your aim is to make an alternative ferrofluid right? Well, to tell u honestly, this is a waste of time. And not sure if it's work or not. And if it's not going to work as soon as possible, means wasting money also. Why make it difficult? You can make a ferrofluid when u mix glue and iron fillings. I promise, it's not a waste of time. Why don't u try that one?

[ArfaidaL]

Actually, i followed all the instructions here just like you said. However, i got different outcomes. You can't melt the binder with acetone within just a few hours. It took me a week to notice that binder was gradually losing its color. And not just that, only a small portion of the tape was stripping off. It will take three weeks to fully strip the color of the tape binder. And i observed, as the tape binder was stripping off, no signs of ferric oxide. If you're going to melt the tape binder with acetone, it will just lose its color.

[ArfaidaL]

how long will it take for the acetone to melt the binder?

[Biotele]

1)Burn Steel Wool 2)Put in water 3) Wait a couple of days. All the FeOx will turn to powder. 4)Separate the magnetite with a magnet. The trick with ferro fluid is to have very fine powder so it make a suspension called a "colloid". The medium is usually a mixture of oil and kerosene. Maybe if you put the magnetite in a tubler you will get very fine powder.

[Zujus]

Thanks I will try to get steel wool and if this will work i involve this to my instructable (with your name of course).

[Biotele]

Did I say a couple of days...I meant a couple of weeks. I don't understand the process but burned steel wool maintain its integrity and doesn't fall apart. After soaking in water for a couple of weeks, red rust will appear and the burned steel wool falls apart. I hope someone can explain this and suggest a faster process.

[bikerbob2005]

hot hydrogen perxiod will work faster than water its not nearly as mole stable as water is. as for the steel wool get the super fine type ,dont burn it with fire use a 9 volt battery as fire will give bad contaminants .next week how to centrifuge right guard for the alu oxide

[DreamDabbler]

Oh, that sounds interesting -- what do you do with aluminum oxide? Toothpaste and a lot of other things have titanium oxide for whitening, I wonder if you could get much out and do something interesting with that.

[flio191]

i would use one of those fish tank bubblers, so it touches more oxygen... so it oxidizes. or one of those hydroponics air stones... in any case, just get more air on it, and it should rust faster... right?

[DanielC23]

Nope....H2O has more O (30%) than "air" which is 78% nitrogen and only 21% oxygen, with traces of water vapor (which has more O than the air it is in! lol!), carbon dioxide/monoxide, argon, ozone and various other trace components, this is why wet iron rusts faster than dry iron exposed only to air.

Just a little common sense applied to a lot of old Star Trek episodes reiterating the percentages of atmospheric gasses in the many "class M planets" (human breathable without respirator assistance) they came across in their "Treks" and putting together the obvious components of water being 2 hydrogen molecules to 1 oxygen, making it 66% H to 33% O rounded down to whole numbers.

However, this is not to say your suggestion is completely without merit, since stirring or agitating the water will expedite the oxidation process for replenishing new O molecules as they combine with the fe molecules.

But the way to REALLY increase the rate is CAREFULLY using an OXIDIZER, which is anything with the "oxidizer" logo on it, but I would limit that to adding only Hydrogen Peroxide (if you look at it, it tells you what it is, one hydrogen per oxygen, or 1 H for each 1 O making this 50% oxygeninstead of the 30% that water has, and when this reacts with the iron, it will release only oxygen gas, and leave plain water as the byproduct, much safer than the other most common oxidizer found in a household... that I suggest to avoid all together which is....bleach..., because that releases chlorine gas which is poisonous/toxic!

Peace, Love, and Light!

[Zujus]

I think it will only work in theory.

[beehard44]

well, the reaction slows down when there is less dissolved O2, cuz O in FeO is oxygen, and where will the iron get the oxygen from oxygen-depleted water? flio has a point there...

[twenglish1]

you can add vinegar to speed up the rusting to a couple hours

[twenglish1]

oh crap i forgot you have to mix bleach and vinegar and put steel wool in and it rusts the whole piece in a couple hours then filter the rust out with a coffee filter

[duct tape]

You take steel wool, put a 9-volt to it, and then when the core is glowing red, drop into a bucket of water. this gave me results in 2 nights.