Abstract
The necessity of a clean face of a mirror goes as far as ensuring that its reflection abilities are not questioned. Reflection is what attracts people to a mirror. During mirror manufacturing, silver, copper and other chemicals overlap to the reflection side of a mirror, making a mirror have metals on both sides. In order to remove the copper and silver metals on the wrong side, we report the comparison of Na2FeO4 and prepared copper chloride (or a mixture of CuSO4.5H2O and NaCl) in cleaning the mirror face by oxidation reaction as a substitute to the currently used FeCl3. We report on the comparison of the three reagents, in terms, of the effluent plant contamination using XRD and XRF to analyse precipitates that formed because of their use. The comparison of equipment corrosion by determining the corrosion rate (gravimetric weight loss method) is also reported. We report the comparison of corrosion resistance of the final mirror using the CASS test or salt spray test. We also tested a much better stainless, steel duplex 2205, using the two reagents to see if it can be used in future, for mirror making equipment to overcome the challenge of equipment corrosion caused by inorganic oxidants. When compared by time parameter, the prepared CuCl2 solution is the fastest; removing 95.63 % copper and 62.83 % silver, and outdoing the currently used FeCl3 which only removed 12.45 % of the deposited silver on the glass within 20 seconds. The prepared CuCl2 did not cause more toxicity to the effluent water generated after its use. The use of Na2FeO4 did not result in mirror corrosion because it passed the CASS test.
M.Sc. (Chemistry)