Sunil Kumar FP
Last Activity: 10 Years ago
The Mond process, sometimes known as the carbonyl process is a technique created by Ludwig Mond in 1890 to extract and purify nickel.
This process makes use of the fact that carbon monoxide complexes with nickel readily and reversibly to give nickel carbonyl. No other element forms a carbonyl compound under the mild conditions used in the process.
This process has three steps:
1. Nickel oxide is reacted with Syngas at 200°C to remove oxygen, leaving impure nickel. Impurities include iron and cobalt.
NiO (s) + H2 (g) → Ni (s) + H2O (g)
2. The impure nickel is reacted with excess carbon monoxide at 50–60°C to form the gas nickel carbonyl, leaving the impurities as solids.
Ni (s) + 4 CO (g) → Ni(CO)4 (g)
3. The mixture of excess carbon monoxide and nickel carbonyl is heated to 220–250°C. On heating, nickel tetracarbonyl decomposes to give nickel:
Ni(CO)4 (g) → Ni (s) + 4 CO (g)