In this Video you can see how we produced over 1000 g of potassium metal in a single destillation. The chemistry behind it is really simple and it is just a reduction of potassium carbonate with magnesium metal: K2CO3 + 3Mg 2K + C + 3MgO.
The technical details of getting this to work are much more difficult and you can see all the trouble and sucess we had with this endavour here. It was certainly a lot of fun and I want to do a lot more projects like that in the future.
Advanced Tinkerings perspective: • Highly Reactive Potassium Metal Produ...
00:00 Introduction
01:53 Getting the Equipment
03:48 Attempt #1
15:55 Attempt #2
28:36 Attempt #3
38:54 Playing with the potassium Metal