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Aluminum versus Mercury

Aluminum versus Mercury

Aluminum versus Mercury

(OP)
Is the presence of oxygen required for mercury to dissolve aluminum?

RE: Aluminum versus Mercury

Two differing processes with the mixture of aluminum and mercury.

The first process - oxygen is required This is a common classroom demonstration and the explanation is always that one is seeing oxidation of the aluminum facilitated by mercury's disruption of its oxide layer.  

The second process - oxygen is not required
Liquid Metal Embrittlement.  Hg wets the  the grain boundaries, causing the grains to unzip.  

Earlier this year in Moomba at a Natural gas processing facility a fire and explosion occurred due this phenomenon. http://www.ferret.com.au/articles/97/0c01e497.asp

When Hg from entrained in the natural gas found it was into an aluminum coldbox (heat exchanger) causing a catastrophic event to occur.

Other LME pairs
Base Metal - Liquid Metal Environment
 
Aluminum -  Gallium
Aluminum -  Mercury
Brass -  Mercury
C-276 (Hastalloy) -  Silver Solders
Copper -  Mercury
Copper Beryllium -  Mercury
Cupronickel -  Lead
8-9% Cr Martensitic Steel -  Lithium
Steel - Lithium
Steel -  Tin
ASTM A723 Steel -  Indium
ASTM A723 Steel - Gallium
Austentic Stainless Steel -  Zinc
 

RE: Aluminum versus Mercury

yokefellow, I am curious:
What experiment/application is to be done with these two metals "outside" of the classroom?

RE: Aluminum versus Mercury

(OP)
I'm in search for a fairly strong material that can dissolve quickly.  It’s a holding pin that needs to dissolve within a certain time frame.  The proposed environment is about 10k subsurface.

RE: Aluminum versus Mercury

For liquid metal embrittlement, the crack growth rate is fairly substantial - I suggest looking through the ASM metals handbook on Failure Analysis & Prevention.  There is a section on liquid metal embrittlement, of aluminum/mercury in particular.  But as Rich2001 indicates, you are not dealing with dissolution but with intergranular crack propagation.

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