QUESTION
Recently, we have acquired Barium metal under mineral oil, and we need to clean the mineral oil off the barium in order to have clean barium metal for deposition. The cleaning will be done under argon, but the cleaning agent chosen is difficult to find. We have chosen hexane, due to its lack of oxygen to react with the barium metal. However, we do not know if the hexane will be a strong enough of a cleaning agent to clean the barium metal for deposition. What other cleaning agents are out there to clean barium metal?
REPLIES
moltenmetal
If there’s nothing on the barium except paraffin oil, a paraffinnic low boiling solvent like hexane is really your best choice. But you’ll have to de-gas it before using it- all solvents dissolve at least some oxygen.
Hexane can be obtained quite dry, but depending on your purity requirements it might also be necessary to dry it by distilling from sodium or using another strong drying agent.
SOURCE
https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=415727
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