The Recycling of Potassium Aluminum Sulfate (Alum) from Aluminum Scraps

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The Recycling of Potassium Aluminum Sulfate (alum) from Aluminum Scraps Introduction In today’s world, society uses a ton of materials and sometimes our overuse of certain materials leads to large amounts of waste. Therefore people try to find different ways of conserving materials and energy by different methods, one of which is recycling. One of the most used metals on earth is aluminum, and aluminum is a difficult metal in that it does not corrode or break down on its own, forcing people to figure out ways of breaking it down in order to recycle it to be used again in another way. People break aluminum down by synthesizing the alum out of the products. Materials and Methods In this experiment, an aluminum can was reacted in order to form potassium aluminum sulfate, or rather, alum. Aluminum cans have a thin coating of plastic on the inside that is surrounded by a thin coating of paint on the outside. In order to get just aluminum, the paint had to be removed. A 250 mL beaker was weighed and the weight was recorded. Scraps of aluminum can weighing between 0.9 to 1.2 grams was then placed inside of the beaker and the beaker with the pieces of can was weighed again in order to obtain the mass of the aluminum can pieces. The beaker then had 50 mL of a 1.4 M KOH solution added and placed on a hot plate under a ventilation hood. In order to not let the solution boiled out of the top of the beaker, distilled water was added whenever it appeared to be reaching the top. As the paint was being removed from the can, an aspirator was set up. When it appeared as though the reaction was complete, which was when you could no longer see any pieces of metal that was still intact and hard, the faucet was turned on and a piece of filter paper was wet before been placed on the filter. Once those two tasks were complete, the reaction was poured through the filter and rinsed

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