Basic copper carbonate is a chemical compound, more properly called copper(II) carbonate hydroxide. It can be classified as a coordination polymer or a salt. It consists of copper(II) bonded to carbonate and hydroxide with formula Cu2(CO3)(OH)2. It is a green solid that occurs in nature as the mineral malachite. It has been used since antiquity as a pigment, and it is still used as such in artist paints, sometimes called verditer, green bice, or mountain green.[3]
Sometimes basic copper carbonate refers to Cu 3(CO 3)2(OH)2, a blue crystalline solid also known as the mineral azurite. It too has been used as pigment, sometimes under the name mountain blue or blue verditer.
Both malachite and azurite can be found in the verdigrispatina that is found on weathered brass, bronze, and copper. The composition of the patina can vary, in a maritime environment depending on the environment a basic chloride may be present, in an urban environment basic sulfates may be present.[4]
This compound is often improperly called (even in chemistry articles) copper carbonate, cupric carbonate, and similar names. The true (neutral) copper(II) carbonate CuCO3 is not known to occur naturally.[5] It is decomposed by water or moisture from the air. It was synthesized only in 1973 by high temperature and very high pressures.[6]
The basic copper carbonates, malachite and azurite, both decompose forming H2O, CO2, and CuO, cupric oxide.[9]
Uses
Basic copper carbonate is used to remove thiols and hydrogen sulfide from some gas streams, a process called "sweetening". Like many other copper compounds, it also has been used as an algaecide, wood preservative and similar applications. It is a precursor to various catalysts and copper soaps.[3]
Both malachite and azurite, as well as synthetic basic copper carbonate have been used as pigments.[10] One example of the use of both azurite and its artificial form blue verditer[11] is the portrait of the family of Balthasar Gerbier by Peter Paul Rubens.[12] The green skirt of Deborah Kip is painted in azurite, smalt, blue verditer (artificial form of azurite), yellow ochre, lead-tin-yellow and yellow lake. The green color is achieved by mixing blue and yellow pigments.[13]
^Encyclopedia Of Corrosion Technology (Google eBook), Philip A. Schweitzer P.E.; CRC Press, 2004, ISBN08247-4878-6
^Holleman, Arnold Frederik; Wiberg, Egon (2001), Wiberg, Nils (ed.), Inorganic Chemistry, translated by Eagleson, Mary; Brewer, William, San Diego/Berlin: Academic Press/De Gruyter, p. 1263, ISBN0-12-352651-5
^Seidel, H.; Ehrhardt, H.; Viswanathan, K.; Johannes, W. (1974). "Darstellung, Struktur und Eigenschaften von Kupfer(II)-Carbonat". Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie. 410 (2): 138–148. doi:10.1002/zaac.19744100207. ISSN0044-2313.
^Jack Reginald Irons Hepburn (1927): "The chemical nature of precipitated basic cupric carbonate". Article CCCLXXXVI, Journal of the Chemical Society (Resumed), volume 1927, pp. 2883–2896. doi:10.1039/JR9270002883
^Robert L. Feller, Rubens’s: The Gerbier Family: Technical Examination of the Pigments and Paint Layers, Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 5 (1973), pp. 54–74.
