A big horde of busted e-fag batteries. They always seem to die really fast for some reason. Got a big pile of them now. Not looking forward too much to the actual recycling bit though. Having to dunk them in and cut them open with a hacksaw under motor oil or petrol, naphtha or the like is a right bugger. Trying to hold a tight grip on both the batteries and a saw whilst absolutely saturated in petrol or oil to stop the lithium inside oxidizing or igniting (although I think it unlikely to ever ignite as the foil it comes in in batteries. Still, worth it, as there is a fair bit of recoverable lithium metal, a couple of grams in a big high end large capacity e-cig battery.
Just the thing for the experiments with electrides I want to try. Such as addition of a some sort of chelator for the lithium cation, so when dissolved in ammonia it might be trappable and removable to provide a pure solvated electron metal, or something close to it. Like a crown ether, or a carcerand to form a permanent carciplex (from the latin 'carcer' meaning 'prison') and irreversibly sequester the Li cation from the ether/ammonia/DIPE/heptane mix I plan on using to allow for its removal. Not sure if that can be done. But have seen some lovely looking bright golden liquid metal, that was apparently either lithium or sodium electride. Not my work, christ I WISH it had been. going to try preparing solvated electrons as a metal. The pics the person involved showed me were astonishing. This liquid metal flowed like gallium or mercury had the same distinctive bright gold hue as does caesium, the most reactive of the alkali metals, and at least pure (or purified at least) lithium bronze looks a LOT like caesium in the elemental state. Golden colored, liquid at RT and which, like Cs or NaK alloy whcch is just what it sounds like, an alloy of sodium and potassium, its very energetic if it gets wet and like Cs, explodes with great violence, like cs, and NaK, the electride that one member of one of the clandestine chem/biotech boards managed to isolate was a liquid. even after removal of the ammonia, that just like Cs metal, it flowed like mercury. One of the prettiest 'dirty pics' I've ever seen outside academic institutional achievements. Even if it were of no practical use, I still would want to isolate it myself;I''d only EVER seen lithium bronze as a layer forming on Li metal, or as little specks in the anhydrous ammonia as the Li-bronze formed. Never like this chick's pic, where she actually had a jar full of the stuff, that if it isn't a true metal, is damnably close to it.
