Turning batteries into medicine

This video is sponsored by excellent courses plus an excellent online learning service that offers high quality courses on a wide range of topics today I will do lithium carbonate which is commonly used to treat bipolar disorder bipolar disorder is a mental condition that It is characterized by unusual changes in mood, someone who suffers from it will have periods where they feel overly excited, happy and full of energy, followed by periods of depression. The energetic period is known as mania, so bipolar disorder is also called manic depression. There are three main forms of the disorder. and they are all classified according to severity.

Bipolar disorder type 1 is the most severe form. Manic episodes last at least 7 days or the mania is so severe that it requires immediate care or hospitalization. This is followed by depressive episodes and suicidal tendencies that last. At least two weeks, some people also experience psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions. Psychosis can occur in both manic and depressive periods, for example, manic psychosis can lead someone to think that they are rich, famous, untouchable, super important, etc., while depressive psychosis can make someone think who is rich, famous, untouchable, super important, etc. the person thinks that he has no money, that he is worthless or even that he has committed a crime.

Bipolar disorder type 2 is a cycle between depression and hypomania, which is a minor form of mania. The last and mildest form is called cyclothymic disorder or cyclothymia. People who suffer from cyclothymia move between hypomania and mild depression. An additional complication is that some people suffer from mixed bipolar disorder. This means that characteristics that are unique to mania or depression can occur at the same time or in rapid cycles. treatable by a combination of therapy and medication, typically treated with three main classes of medications, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and anticonvulsants, sometimes can be controlled with a single mood state, but often requires a combination of medications, It is not curable, but with proper treatment the symptoms can be controlled and it can go into remission.

In the mid-20th century it was discovered that lithium compounds could help treat this disorder. I have included the story about its discovery on Wikipedia and you can read it if you are interested to this day. Lithium carbonate is one of the most effective and most commonly prescribed mood stabilizers to treat bipolar disorder; However, new and more effective medications are gradually being developed. Once lithium is ingested, it spreads throughout the central nervous system and affects a lot of different processes, however, that is not yet the case. It's known exactly how lithium works to treat the disorder, so like I said before, I'm going to make lithium carbonate.

The route to lithium carbonate is quite easy and starts with lithium metal. Lithium metal is first reacted with water to produce lithium hydroxide and then carbon dioxide is pumped through the water to produce lithium carbonate. Lithium metal can be extracted from

batteries

, but it is not really profitable. I wanted to do this on a larger scale so I split this video into two main parts in the first part. I will make the lithium carbonate directly from lithium hydroxide and in the second part I will make a small scale preparation from

batteries

. Well, for the first part where I make it from lithium hydroxide, I need three main things.

Villa theme, hydroxide itself, hydrochloric acid. and baking soda. I made lithium hydroxide in a previous video, but ended up using almost all of it to make lithium peroxide instead of making it again myself. I just bought some lithium hydroxide on eBay. One important thing to note is that the lithium hydroxide I'm using here is the monohydrate and not the hydrated form. Both forms can be used, but the amount of each will be different. Hydrochloric acid, also known as muriatic acid, was purchased at the hardware store. Baking soda is just regular baking soda that I bought at the supermarket, the amount of baking soda and hydrochloric acid used depends on many factors and I can't give an exact amount just to be sure.

I would have at least 500 grams of baking soda and about 500 milliliters of hydrochloric acid is fine, so to start I added 40 grams of lithium hydroxide, the small dish was rinsed with about 10 milliliters of water and then I added another 290. The Amount of water I'm adding here is enough to dissolve everything. the lithium hydroxide I turn on the stirring and wait for everything to dissolve the lithium hydroxide does not dissolve super fast so I left it for about an hour when I came back almost everything had dissolved but it was still a little cloudy these There are impurities that were present in the lithium hydroxide and I'm going to have to filter it.

What's funny is that the impurity is probably just lithium carbonate that forms when lithium hydroxide is exposed to CO2 in the air, however I'm not sure. I'm one hundred percent sure this is lithium carbonate, so I have to filter it out anyway just to probably do it again. In any case, I do a vacuum filtration and everything happens very quickly. One important thing to note is that paper filters cannot be used for this step, let's see that hydroxide is a strong base and a concentrated solution will disintegrate the paper, the filter is removed and I am left with a relatively clear solution of lithium hydroxide , the slight turbidity is due only to the presence of air in the solution.

It is transferred back to a beaker and the round bottom flask is washed with some distilled water, the beaker is covered with some plastic wrap and I move on to setting up my CO2 generator in the same bottom flask than before starting. To add baking soda, I fill the flask about half full and then I add a little water. I'm going to add hydrochloric acid to generate the CO2 and if I don't wet the baking soda first, it tends to clump up and become quite hard. I make sure to wet most of the baking soda and stir things up from time to time using a stirring rod. glass.

I attach a vacuum adapter to the flask and then add an additional funnel. The additional funnel is pre-filled with some dilute hydrochloric acid from the casing. It is attached to the vacuum adapter and the other end is placed in the lithium hydroxide solution before starting. I test the pH using some universal pH paper according to the color, we can see that the solution is strongly basic with a pH of around 14. To start, I open the addition funnel and put a drop of hydrochloric acid when the hydrochloric acid comes into contact with sodium bicarbonate, reacts to form sodium chloride, water and co2 gas, the gas generated leaves the vacuum adapter. and bubbled through the solution the apparatus is initially filled with air so this is what bubbles first once the air is cleared and we start pumping co2 through the solution it should start to turn cloudy a As the CO2 is pumped, some reacts with lithium hydroxide to form lithium carbonate and water.

Lithium carbonate is not very soluble in water, so it precipitates as it forms. Also, the reaction between lithium hydroxide and carbon dioxide is exothermic, so the solution will heat up as you heat the carbon dioxide. The solubility of the carbon dioxide decreases and I believe this actually reduces the efficiency of the reaction. I found the CO2 bubbling rate to be quite difficult to control most of the time, either too fast or too slow. I let it go. a little faster, but because of this I had to empty and replenish the device several times. I didn't have anything on it, but the most efficient way to generate CO2 is to simply use dry ice, lithium hydroxide, a strongly basic, but as it is consumed, the pH should decrease when finished.

There should be little to no lithium hydroxide left and the pH should be between 8 and 9. I continue bubbling the CO2 for about 30 minutes and check the pH again. It is difficult to know exactly the color. where it is but it seems to be around 10. I continued bubbling for another 30 minutes and this time when I check it it seems to be between 8 and 9 so we're almost done, I let it bubble for about 30 more seconds and then took things apart, The plastic wrap has been removed and there is a bunch of lithium carbonate that I need to recover from the hose.

This is done very easily by simply breaking it up with your fingers. It's a little complicated but it gets the job done. I didn't completely clean the tube and there's still some stubborn lithium carbonate left, but it's not really a big loss, there's a lot of stuff stuck to the side of the glass, so with a metal spatula I break up the lithium carbonate on the bottom as well It has solidified, so I cut it too. I let most of the solids settle and the liquid portion is decanted into another beaker. The solids are temporarily placed aside and I bring this liquid to a boil, boiling the solution has two. -double benefit Firstly, in the presence of co2, lithium carbonate can form the more soluble lithium bicarbonate by boiling the solution, the co2 gas is removed and all lithium bicarbonate must be converted back to lithium carbonate.

The second reason is that lithium carbonate is one of those compounds where its solubility decreases as the temperature increases, so by boiling the solution we are destroying any lithium bicarbonate that may be present and decreasing the overall solubility of the lithium carbonate. After boiling lithium for a few minutes, the solution is removed from the hot plate. The hot solution is then transferred back to the other glass to complete the transfer. The glass is washed with a little boiling water. I mix it using a glass stirring rod and wash the lithium carbonate as thoroughly as possible while the lithium carbonate is still hot.

It is separated using a coffee filter once everything has passed I washed it several times with boiling distilled water the filter was removed and I let it dry on a paper towel for a few days when I returned I was left with a very nice lithium carbonate powder, the performance final was 30 grams, which represents a percentage yield of 85 percent, considering that this is such a simple preparation, the yield should be much closer to one hundred and eighty-five, it is actually quite low. I think the reason for this is actually the way I decided to generate my co2, hydrochloric acid is volatile and I think some of it went through the co2 and reacted with my lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide.

I knew this would happen to some extent, but I didn't think it would happen. It can have a big impact on my performance. This problem can be avoided by using dry ice or an intermediate gas bubbler. A gas bubbler filled with water could probably remove most of the hydrochloric acid. Well, now for the second and most exciting part, where I make lithium carbonate starting with a battery. Let me start by saying that this method is not only much more expensive but also much more dangerous. That said, I think we can get started, there are a few ways to do this and everything.

Many of them are a pretty big pain. I personally found that using a pipe cutter like this was the easiest method. The new pipe cutters seem to do a pretty good job but the one I'm using is a little old and dull and eventually cuts the unfortunately the one I'm using is a little dull and pushed part of the casing into the lithium, not only is it dangerous and can cause a short circuit, but also makes it very painful to remove if the battery is cut, it will heat up and although it is unlikely to burst into flames, using a small cutter, I remove much of the case and can take out everything, then it is unrolled and the lithium foil is separated from the other part.

Small pieces of the battery can be broken off and thrown into the glass on the left that has about 40 milliliters of water. It is very important to add the lithium slowly because if too much is added at once, it can burst into flames and literally explode. Burning lithium will fly everywhere and can cause a massive fire. Although lithium is the least reactive of the alkali metals, it should be treated with respect and used with caution, even if added in small portions, it can still catch fire at least it doesn't explode, anyway the reaction we are doing here is quite Simple when lithium is added it reacts with water to form lithium hydroxide and hydrogen gas, the hydrogen gas bubbles out of the glass and the lithium hydroxide simply dissolves.

In the water between shots, some of the lithium caught fire again and stuck to the wall of the glass, causing it to crack anyway. Once I finished adding all the lithium, the procedure is pretty much the same as the first part. some insoluble white stuff so I quickly filter it out, pour the lithium hydroxide into a beaker and set up my co2 generator. The co2 is pumped through the solution and continue until a pH of around nine or ten the generatorof co2 is Removed and scraped the lithium carbonate from the walls of the glass. The portion of water is poured into a glass and brought to a boil.

Unlike last time, a lot of lithium carbonate came out of the solution and transferred to the other one. To give the lithium carbonate a good wash, I separated it using a coffee filter and washed it with a little water. I let it dry overnight and then I transferred the powder to a watch glass. The lithium carbonate yield was 2. 8 5 grams or about 71% this is significantly less than the last run and I'm not exactly sure what happened. I even diluted the hydrochloric acid much more to see if that would affect anything anyway regardless of performance it worked and now I have some medications that made with a battery on the left I combined all my lithium carbonate and on the right I weighed about 300 milligrams. 300 milligrams is the typical dose of lithium carbonate and it is taken three or four times a day, it is taken in pill form, but as with most medications, it is not simply packaged in a pill capsule and pure additives that are included with the pill are known as excipients, although the SAR excipient is commonly known simply as fillers.

It has a purpose depending on what is included, it can change the properties of the pill and I have listed some of the main ways here just for fun. I mixed two common binders, silicon dioxide and cellulose, once it was all mixed, I packed it very carelessly. on a pill I took on the other end and now I have the first finished product from Nile Red pharmaceuticals, joking aside this is a very low quality product containing dirty lithium carbonate and anyway no one should even think in ingesting it now for just A final test to see if we really have lithium carbonate.

It is a very easy test to do and I only need to add a little lithium carbonate to some acidified water. Lithium carbonate is a base and when added will react to form CO2 gas when added. This generated a lot of bubbling, so I can confirm that I do, in fact, have lithium carbonate. Many thanks to the Great Courses Plus for sponsoring this video. The Great Courses Plus is an online service that offers unlimited access to high-quality information. conferences and courses from the best educators from around the world. Its educators include professors from Ivy League schools and other top universities around the world, as well as experts from places like National Geographic and the Smithsonian.

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