After recently buying an electric furnace, we now have the opportunity to try electrochemistry with molten ionic salts. This opens the door to making a whole bunch of exciting new things, such as sodium, potassium, lithium, calcium, magnesium, and many more.

To start off with, in this video we have a go at one of my favourite chemical reactions of all time, the Hall–Héroult process for converting aluminium oxide into aluminium metal.

Mixing our aluminium oxide with cryolite to reduce its melting point to 1000C, we melt it and electrolyse the molten mixture in order to reduce the aluminium ions into the metallic state on the cathode. It takes us a few tries, but we ultimately obtain 80 mg of the metal (which is a terrible yield, but at least it worked to some degree).

Keep in mind, this is a stupid way to obtain aluminium in a home setting, but it's interesting to explore the process nonetheless.


Music: https://www.bensound.com