Make Cobalt and Manganese Nitrates

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We show how to make Cobalt nitrate and Manganese nitrate needed to make manganese dioxide electrodes.

WARNING: These are heavy metals and toxic if mishandled. In addition cobalt is carcinogenic. You MUST wear gloves and preferably additional safety equipment like dust masks and lab coat. A fumehood is recommended too.

Making cobalt nitrate is very easy, just get cobalt carbonate from a pottery supply store and mix it with twice its mass in water. Then add nitric acid until it stops fizzing. That’s all! The red solution can be dried to make cobalt nitrate crystals for storage.

Making manganese nitrate is a little more complicated. Manganese dioxide is mixed with oxalic acid, water and nitric acid to produce manganese nitrate. Alternatively you can bubble nitrogen dioxide directly into the manganese dioxide. If the solution is yellow it’s because there is some iron contamination. But this is not a problem for making manganese dioxide electrodes.

I think that you can purify your manganese nitrate by simply make some manganese sulfate and purify it by the method showed above. Then you convert all off the manganese sulfate to hydroxide by using sodium hydroxide.

The result is manganese hydroxide and you can mix it with nitric acid in order to get purer manganese nitrate out of batteries

知らぬが仏 [shiranu ga hotoke]
Ignorance is bliss. / What you don’t know can’t hurt you.
Lit: Not knowing is Buddha.