This video is a report on an interesting experiment we did based on the reference shown.

We weighed 40 grams of anhydrous zinc chloride, taken care to protect from moisture in the air.

Next we weighed out 6.5 grams of aluminium powder.

These were mixed together rapidly, with any lumps being broken up using a metal spatula.

This took about 30 seconds to minimize atmospheric contact.

There were a few small lumps of zinc chloride,

but not many.

The mixture was added to a dry 100 ml round bottom flask which was then stoppered.

You'll notice all the way through we were very careful to exclude atmospheric moisture wherever we could.

We then connected the flask up to a distillation adapter.

As shown here, the flask is at an angle with the mixture flat

and the adapter outlet pointing down.

This is held on a stand so that the flask can be heated strongly with a gas flame.

We then prepared a dry 250 ml glass bottle as shown here.

The bottle was chosen so that the adapter outlet could fit through the neck of the bottle for quite some distance

but leave only a small gap between the bottle neck and the adapter.

We then used a cold pack tied together with tape to wrap the bottle in order to keep it chilled down.

The apparatus was set up with the flask over a gas flame and with lots of strong air ventilation running.

Ventilation is extremely important to be safe for this reaction.

Here you can see how the adapter fits into the bottle.

Note the small gap and the way that the adapter can extend the flask.

the bottle.

We heated the flask fairly gently with the theory that it would be good to first get

the reaction mixture to completely melt.

This happened but took 4-5 minutes.

A white smoke started to appear in the flask and soon the reaction became very vigorous

and filled the bottle with white solid.

Despite our precautions, a fair amount of white smoke was also emitted out of the bottle

captured by the ventilation.

The residue in the flask looks like gray zinc metal.

Here's the flask post reaction.

It looks more full than it is.

We scraped the inside of the bottle so we could see how much powder we captured.

The weight difference turned out to be around 9 grams.

This isn't great considering the theoretical yield is nearly 40 grams.

We added a little more aluminum chloride.

We figured we're gonna need a bigger flask.

So we did the reaction again using the same quantities of reagents but using a 250ml flask

for the reaction.

Our idea was that maybe having a more shallow layer of reacting material with more surface

area might help get more product out of the reaction flask.

We heated the flask slightly more strongly.

It took us about 3 minutes at first and again it took 4-5 minutes for the reaction to kickoff.

This time we'll show you the reaction in all its glory.

Enjoy!

this time we ended up with 14 grams of product better but not amazing the

reaction flask did however seem emptier than last time this process works but

it's low yielding but it's great for a small quantity of hard to obtain

anhydrous aluminum chloride be careful washing out their reaction flask use

ventilation at all times finally let's see how aluminum chloride reacts with

water quite violently with a lot of heat and huge white clouds of HCl being

produced this is a very useful reagent for example for Friedel crafts reactions

but do take care with it and keep it tightly stoppered

you