New hydrometallurgical approach to obtain uniform antiferromagnetic ferrous chloride cubes from waste tin cans

Tin-plated iron or steel containers are one of the major disposed solid wastes after their utilization to open atmosphere, which leads to create substantial environmental pollution, especially soil and water pollution due to their disposal by landfills methods. These waste iron or steel containers, from the various iron or steel industries, contain a huge amount of iron source, which can be utilized efficiently to synthesis value-added product. In the present study, we have designed a method to grow and stabilize ferrous chloride tetrahydrate (FeCl2·4H2O) from the waste tin-plated iron container. The crystallization rate of FeCl2·4H2O has been controlled by the addition of anti-solvent. The present investigation reveals that with increasing anti-solvent dielectric constant, uniform cubic shape FeCl2·4H2O particles were formed in lesser time without hampering their composition and morphology. The scanning electron micrographs (SEM) show that FeCl2·4H2O particles were cubic in shape with size ranging from 4.2 to 6.7 μm. The purity of FeCl2·4H2O has also been confirmed through magnetic study. M–H plot confirms the antiferromagnetic nature of the synthesized FeCl2·4H2O (TN = 22.4–22.7 K). The observed magnetic moment of FeCl2·4H2O varied from 4.85 to 4.92 μB. The magnetic moment of synthesized FeCl2·4H2O is in close agreement with the theoretical magnetic moment value of Fe2+-free ions.