How to Get Beryllium

Beryllium is too reactive to be found in elemental form but is an important part of about 100 minerals, with beryl (Al2Be3Si6O18) and bertrandite (Be4Si2O7(OH)2) being the most commercially important. The United States is the largest producer of beryllium in the world with the remainder coming from Brazil, China and Russia. The following steps will show the most common method of extracting beryllium from its ore.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Grind up the ore and add sodium silicofluoride and soda ash. Press the mixture into briquettes. Heat the briquettes to 700 degrees Celsius in a rotating hearth furnace until they become a coherent mass. Crush, mill and leach the heated briquettes to remove any remaining water.
2. Remove the red mud waste from the resulting material, which will leave a high concentration of sodium beryllium fluoride in solution. Add sodium hydroxide until the pH of the solution is 12 and allow beryllium hydroxide to precipitate out, leaving beryllium fluoride.
3. Add magnesium to the beryllium fluoride and heat to 1,300 degrees Celsius. The beryllium fluoride will be reduced to pure beryllium by the following equation: BeF2 + Mg -> MgF2 + Be.
4. Insert sodium fluoride into the beryllium hydroxide precipitated out earlier to obtain more beryllium fluoride. Sodium chloride (table salt) can be added instead to get beryllium chloride.
5. Heat the beryllium chloride thus obtained until it melts and add more salt since pure beryllium chloride does not conduct electricity well. Pass an electrical current through this solution to obtain the pure beryllium. Beryllium will collect at the cathode and chlorine will collect at the anode.