How to extract mercury from mercuric chloride??

How to extract mercury from mercuric chloride??

My goodness, why would you have or make mercury chloride in the first place? It's one of the most toxic forms of Hg there is.

Whenever I want to remove chlorine from a compound I use either lye (sodium hydroxide) or baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).

The reaction should give you table salt and extremely finely divided droplets of mercury metal.

Do be careful with HgCl any damage it does to the body is permanent,it adsorbs through the skin and it only takes a tiny amount to kill you, and less to cause serious brain damage.

Thankx sir

UPDATE: I've done some reading and it turns out I was wrong.

If you use lye,you will in fact get the mercury out of solution. BUT it will be a black powder of mercury oxide, which would have to be heated in order to convert it to the metal.

It turns out that the common way to get mercury metal out of solution is by adding aluminum foil to it. The mercury amalgamates with the aluminum and falls to the bottom where it can be easily collected.

Usually you use excess aluminum and let it stand overnight to ensure that you get ALL of the mercury,before you dispose of the waste water.

You are 100% right
thankx sir

I knew an easy way

I knew an easy way