Skip to content

Mercury Chloride

Mercury chloride is white crystalline powder, which slightly volatilize at room temperature. It is a common mercury reagent. White liquid mercury is the raw material. It is soluble in water, ethyl alcohol, diethyl ether, methyl alcohol, acetone and ethyl acetate, however not in carbon disulfide and pyridine. Mercury(II) chloride is high toxic. It should refer to MSDS when handling.

Mercury Chloride

CAS No.:7487-94-7EINECS No.:231-299-8Molecular Formula:HgCl2Molecular Weight:271.50
Melting Point:277℃Boiling Point:302℃Density:5.44UN 1624 6.1/PG 2

 

Applications

Mercury dichloride is raw material for producing mercury(I) chloride and other mercury salts. It is a kind of battery depolarizer. It uses as catalyst for producing polyvinyl chloride. However it uses as preservative in medicine and wood.

Mercury(II) chloride is mordant in pesticide, coating and dyeing. Amalgamation process before silver plating need it to improve binding force of silver coating and base metal.

Mercury bichloride is important reagent for analytical chemical. It is catalyst  for organic synthesis.

HgCl2 is raw material for metallic amalgam. For example when processing aluminum amalgam, dipping aluminum into mercury chloride solutions would compound with mercury on the surface to amalgam. The formed amalgam remove the oxide layer protection and activate aluminum.