sci.energy

Front Office wrote:
>[snip all the fun]

> Re silicon: I have read on the Web that silicon
> can be reduced from its oxide with carbon.

Sand + charcoal + electric furnace = carborundum most likely.

> Does anyone have any insight into, or guidance
> to give, on that? Aluminum is also said to work
> as a good reducing agent for silicon, but I have
> not been successful so far in getting silicon --
> though I might have been successful yesterday.

AlSi alloys readily form. Stoichiometry is important.
Aluminosilicates are all over the composition map, too.

> What chemical property determines which
> element has the greater affinity for oxygen?
> ., does carbon have a greater affinity for
> carbon than does silicon?

Heats of formation of the oxides, measured oxygen fugacities.
Thermodynamics proposes, kinetics disposes. After the paperwork is
done, it still depends on how you run it.

> If I use aluminum to reduce silicon, is there a
> simple way, chemically, to separate the product
> silicon from residual aluminum -- or at least a
> way to identify silicon as silicon (and not
> aluminum)?

No. Look up commercial polysilicon manufacture - it's AWFUL. If
there were a better way, they do it differently. Small scale has some
slack, but not much.

> Thanks for help in this project.

Good luck! Does Homeland Severity know you think you are a free man?

/uncleal/

--
Uncle Al
/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
/uncleal/ #a2