Zn + CaCO3 → CO + ZnO + CaO
Zinc + Calcium carbonate -> carbon monoxide + zinc oxide + calcium oxide
Calcium carbonate should be extremely easy to acquire almost anywhere in the world. I suspect zinc is innocuous enough that it can be easily acquired too. Carbon monoxide is the friend we want. Zinc oxide is so innocuous it's used as an antiseptic for skin lesions and calcium oxide is good old quicklime, despite being caustic when mixed with water it's just a white powder without it.
So, shouldn't this be a good method for producing CO? My chemistry studying years are long gone but stay with me (and correct me if I'm mistaken).
The reaction is already balanced, so 1 mole of Zinc + 1 mole of CaCO3 will produce (ideally) 1 mole of CO + 1 mole of ZnO + 1 mole of CaO
Now we need to know how much a mole of Zn and one mole of CaCO3 weight. It's 65,38 grs and 100 grs respectively. If we make these 2 react fully, we'll get 28,01 grs of CO + 81,38 grs of ZO + 56,077 grs CaO.
So far so good, but 28 grs of CO isn't much. We need to multiply! The density of CO is 1,14 Kgs/m3, which means we need to know how many times we need to multiply 28,01 grs to get that 1,14 Kgs or 1 m3! It's 40,7! We need 40,7 moles of CO for it to be 1m3!
And how do we do that? We start with 40,7 x 65,38 of Zinc = 2660,95 grs or 2,661 Kgs and 40,7 x 100grs of CaCO3 = 4070 gr or 4,070 Kgs
If it all worked perfectly, we'd need little over 2,5 Kgs of Zinc and 4 Kgs of CaC03! Pretty doable, right? 1m3 is a crazy amount! You could get 10 000 ppm of CO in a 100 m3 room! Who needs all that space when a car is maybe 2 or 3 m3 and a bathroom can be 7 to 10 m3!
Problem is, it needs heat to happen, it also releases heat. There's also the huge problem of how much we can get the reagents to actually react, meaning all those Kgs may end up only reacting to produce a tiny bit of CO and not the full, or close to full, amount.
Anyway, here are some resources.
Balanced reaction equation
Reaction discussion
In the end, I suppose this is not a viable method or someone would have elaborated and perhaps used it already. Anyway, would love to hear it if someone has an opinion on this.
Zinc + Calcium carbonate -> carbon monoxide + zinc oxide + calcium oxide
Calcium carbonate should be extremely easy to acquire almost anywhere in the world. I suspect zinc is innocuous enough that it can be easily acquired too. Carbon monoxide is the friend we want. Zinc oxide is so innocuous it's used as an antiseptic for skin lesions and calcium oxide is good old quicklime, despite being caustic when mixed with water it's just a white powder without it.
So, shouldn't this be a good method for producing CO? My chemistry studying years are long gone but stay with me (and correct me if I'm mistaken).
The reaction is already balanced, so 1 mole of Zinc + 1 mole of CaCO3 will produce (ideally) 1 mole of CO + 1 mole of ZnO + 1 mole of CaO
Now we need to know how much a mole of Zn and one mole of CaCO3 weight. It's 65,38 grs and 100 grs respectively. If we make these 2 react fully, we'll get 28,01 grs of CO + 81,38 grs of ZO + 56,077 grs CaO.
So far so good, but 28 grs of CO isn't much. We need to multiply! The density of CO is 1,14 Kgs/m3, which means we need to know how many times we need to multiply 28,01 grs to get that 1,14 Kgs or 1 m3! It's 40,7! We need 40,7 moles of CO for it to be 1m3!
And how do we do that? We start with 40,7 x 65,38 of Zinc = 2660,95 grs or 2,661 Kgs and 40,7 x 100grs of CaCO3 = 4070 gr or 4,070 Kgs
If it all worked perfectly, we'd need little over 2,5 Kgs of Zinc and 4 Kgs of CaC03! Pretty doable, right? 1m3 is a crazy amount! You could get 10 000 ppm of CO in a 100 m3 room! Who needs all that space when a car is maybe 2 or 3 m3 and a bathroom can be 7 to 10 m3!
Problem is, it needs heat to happen, it also releases heat. There's also the huge problem of how much we can get the reagents to actually react, meaning all those Kgs may end up only reacting to produce a tiny bit of CO and not the full, or close to full, amount.
Anyway, here are some resources.
Balanced reaction equation
Reaction discussion
In the end, I suppose this is not a viable method or someone would have elaborated and perhaps used it already. Anyway, would love to hear it if someone has an opinion on this.
