Effective Removal of Iron Contents by Chalk Powder in the Commercial Crude Sodium Sulphide

Aims: This paper reports the investigations pertaining to the adsorbability of ferri/ferrous impurities found in commercial grade sodium sulphide (which is not suitable for manufacture of pharmaceutical grade chemicals and dyes chemicals) by using chalk powder as an adsorbent in different proportions in the aqueous solution of commercial grade sodium sulphide.
Study Design: Supernatant solution obtained after soda ash treatment of barium sulphide extract contains sodium sulphide as the main by-product. This supernatant solution on evaporation gives flakes of crude sodium sulphide.
Place and Duration of Study: This study was carried out in Alwar (Raj.), India and the duration of study was two years.
Methodology: All required methods, materials, preparations of reagents and experiments were carried out using standard procedures.
Results: It is noted that incorporation of chalk powder reduces the iron contents considerably. Even slight addition (as small as 1%) is sufficient to reduce the contamination of iron contents from 1.50 mg to 0.10 mg. Hence this method had proved to be a cost effective and convenient way for the reduction of iron contents in the contaminated crude sodium sulphide.
Conclusion: Based on the above results, it can therefore be concluded that chalk powder is a very good adsorbent. Even using 0.05g of chalk powder reduces the amount of iron from 1.50mg to 0.12mg.The obtained results can be quite useful in industrial practice.