Cleaning mineral/parffin oil from Barium metal

[jonton0021]

Hello everyone! I'm not sure if this is a materials engineering question, or a chemical engineering question, but I just want to be sure, and get a second opinion on it.

Recently, we have acquired Barium metal under mineral oil, and we need to clean the mineral oil off the barium in order to have clean barium metal for deposition. The cleaning will be done under argon, but the cleaning agent chosen difficult to find. We have chosen hexane, due to it's lack of oxygen to react with the barium metal. However, we do not know if the hexane will be a strong enough cleaning agent to clean the barium metal for deposition. What other cleaning agents are out there to clean barium metal?

All help is appreciated, and thank you in advanced.

 

[moltenmetal]

If there's nothing on the barium except parafin oil, a parafinnic low boiling solvent like hexane is really your best choice. But you'll have to de-gas it before using it- all solvents dissolve at least some oxygen.

 

[jonton0021]

@moltenmetal- Thanks! It's very important to keep the maximum purity of the barium metal. So knowing that we should de-gas our solvent is helpful. Thank you!

 

[moltenmetal]

Hexane can be obtained quite dry, but depending on your purity requirements it might also be necessary to dry it by distilling from sodium or using another strong drying agent.

 

[georgeverghese]

Another solvent for critical cleaning ops on oxygen compressors is trichloroethylene or perchloroethylene - you may need to check if there is any residual O2 in commercial or analytical grade supply.

So what is the residual O2 content in this argon ?

 

[moltenmetal]

I wouldn't recommend trying to clean a metal like barium with a chlorinated solvent. I would expect at least some dechlorination, perhaps not as dangerously as they react with sodium and potassium metal, but enough to be worrisome. There is zero risk of reaction with pure hexane.

 

[georgeverghese]

Moltenmetal, Agreed a Grignard reagent synthesis type reaction is generically possible with a Group II metal and an organic chloride.