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I work for an inorganic chemical manufacturer whose speciality is cobalt salts. Cobalt is a 1st row transition metal and transition metals are known to be colourful compounds! The picture below shows you some of the different coloured cobalt compounds formed.

We start off with a low grade cobalt compound which we dissolve in nitric acid to form cobalt nitrate solution. We then purify (clean) the solution using a range of techniques such as precipitation (removing the unwanted ion from solution by making it a solid compound) and solvent extraction (separation of ions using an organic extractant).

My job is to improve the different stages of production or to create a new process.  I normally do some laboratory experiments to see how the reaction occurs and look at different variables such as temperature and pH. From the laboratory experiments we normally scale up to production size experiments (experiments using over 10000  litres of solution – this is equivalent to 20000 small bottles of coke!)

The picture below shows you what our lab looks like (ignore the mess on the benches – that just shows we work hard!)

This is a fume cupboard where I will complete my experiments. We have to complete experiments in fume cupboards if any nasty gases are formed as the fume cupboard will take the gases away.

The picture below shows some of the instruments we use to test our products. The instrument on the left is how we measure cobalt concentration (we need a microwave to heat up the solution!). The instrument on the right determines the particle size of the powders we make.

Finally this is where I complete all my paper work and produce graphs from the results I collect in the laboratory.