# Talk:Iron(III) chloride

The article is about the 3 chloride, but one of the production methods listed is;
"Solutions of iron(III) chloride are produced industrially both from iron and from ore, in a closed-loop process.

  1. Dissolving pure iron in a solution of iron(III) chloride

         Fe(s) + 2 FeCl3(aq) → 3 FeCl2(aq)"

Reducing the 3 chloride to the 2.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.152.25.154 (talk) 12:49, 4 January 2011 (UTC) 

Hi Martin, this is it: as simple as that. Wim van Dorst 20:36, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC)
Hi Wim- does this template go on the talk page, or the article page?  Does it apply if we use any of the templates, or just certain ones? Thanks, Walkerma 21:25, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
These wikiproject templates go on the talk page. Sofar 'we' have defined only two templates in the wikiproject: the {{chem-stub}} which can be used both in stub articles or on their talk page, and this {{WikiProject Chemistry}} which you see above. Note that on the Chemistry Wikiproject wikipage, I preliminarily defined this one template as applicable to all Chemistry wikiprojects and its sub-wikiprojects, although that can be elaborated if we choose so. Wim van Dorst 22:06, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC).
Thanks! I see I missed the bit about the talk page before (sorry!), but this clarifies it all nicely.  Walkerma 22:23, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Whoever did the bulk of the work here did a good job, because this is a nfty report.  One suggestion: the article conflates anhydrous and hydrated forms, which can be misleading and even dangerous.  They are quite different chemical critters. --Smokefoot 18:29, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I wrote a lot of this.  Yes, I know they are very different beasts, just like with SnCl4 and AlCl3.  You're doing a nice job on rewriting the page, keep it up!  I think it would be hard justifying separate pages for the anhydrous and the hydrate, we need to find a format that works well without conflating.  What you see is my attempt, in effect a first attempt, I started from a blank page.  Whatever you can come up with to improve on that may be worth discussing, perhaps we can apply an ideas you have to the many other halides that have similar issues.  One minor thing, Greenwood & Earnshaw say anhydrous FeCl3 is brown-black; where are you getting the green-black color from?  Thanks for your excellent work, Walkerma 19:41, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Well you did a great job on a species whose applicability I underestimated until reading your article and confirming it in my sources.  About the color, I'll recheck, because I did feel uncomfortable with the factoid I found.--Smokefoot 04:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey, who'd have thought it - reflected vs transmitted light!  You learn something every day! Thanks for digging that up, Smokefoot, now we have an interesting quirky property instead of a boring piece of data! Walkerma 06:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Dear Sirs,
a discussion about the commerciality of "Suppliers" is started here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:213.188.227.119
My main sorrow is, that these "suppliers" are in front of the literature and external links, making the commercial links seem to be more important than the scientific contents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:213.188.227.119
Best regards 
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.188.227.119 (talk) 00:04, 2006 May 26 (UTC)

Can someone confirm if it is possible to use FeCl3 when one whant proof of H2S in a gas and how it would be done. / Martin
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.179.220.50 (talk) 21:47, 2006 February 16 (UTC)

Id just like to say thank you to whoever added the little part about using the ferric chloride test to detect for phenols. i need info on this test for my a level coursework and its proved very helpful as there is not much info on this test anywhere else onthe net! Thank you wikipedia!
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.46.180.18 (talk) 20:21, 2006 October 23 (UTC)

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. LuciferMorgan 02:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Just a note for anyone to edit, as I don't know which is right, is the formula for Iron(III) Chloride FeCl3 or Cl3Fe. I'm asking because in the first paragraph it says FeCl3 but in the infobox on the side it says Cl3Fe. Can someone fix this error to which ever one is correct as I do not know the correct formula. ☺EfansayT/C☺ 04:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Either one is right, depending on which convention you are following.  The usual convention for binary compounds like this is to put the metal first, but the table uses the Hill formula system which goes C then H then others alphabetically. Walkerma 14:45, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Hill sequence is uncommon for inorganic compounds, and highly uncommon for FeCl3. Therefore I corrected this in the table. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 21:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC).

Conducting another GA sweeps review to re-review all Good Articles to verify that they continue to meet the Good Article criteria. This article meets all criteria except the inline citation criteria, as there are significant sections of the article that are not cited. I don't believe this is a major issue, as it looks like this can be solved by converted the 'further reading' items over to inline citations. If someone familiar with these sources could do this, the article can remain listed at WP:GA. I'll put this on hold at GA sweeps until this is done. Cheers! Dr. Cash 19:53, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

There is an in-line reference for each section (I added one). For the rest the article is in my perception well-enough referenced for GA. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 20:54, 26 October 2007 (UTC).
Ok, the article looks acceptable now, although there is still information under 'Other uses' that should be sourced. That particular section is also looking rather "listy", and could be written a little better. Other than that, it looks ok. Dr. Cash (talk) 17:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Sulfur dioxide, according to the Standard electrode potential (data page), is not strong enough to oxidize iron II to iron III. The reduction potential for sulfur dioxide to sulfur is only +0.50. The potential for oxidation of iron II to iron III is +0.77. (The potential sign is reversed for oxidation, as the table is for standard reduction potentials. The reduction potential has to be higher than the oxidation potential for the reaction to occur spontaneously (e.g., without any electric current or extreme heat). --Cheminterest (talk) 21:52, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the reaction with alkoxides should be clarified or altered based on this report [1] 87.102.13.111 (talk) 17:39, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I've clarified the text [2], but may still be worth an expert look.87.102.13.111 (talk) 19:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi, #5 states:
"Reacting Iron with hydrochloric acid, then with hydrogen peroxide. The hydrogen peroxide is the catalyst in turning iron chloride into ferric chloride"
Did I understand well? iron chloride = ferric chloride, or it is supposed to be talking about a conversion from ferrous clhoride to ferric clhoride?
Sorry to sneak here, I have not enough knowledge of chemistry, perhaps the sentences just confused me. Thanks.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mothernatura (talk • contribs) 20:08, 2014 November 22 (UTC)

Just as Copper Sulphate appears white when anhydrous AND blue when hydrated, so I would guess that Iron (III) Chloride has different colours in its different hydrated forms.  WHY DOES THE PICTURE SHOW IRON (III) CHLORIDE HEXAHYDRATE *AND NOT* THE ANHYDROUS FORM (assuming that these are the only forms of Iron (III) Chloride - something I cannot be certain of myself).  I have a picture of what I believe to be ANHYDROUS Iron (III) Chloride, it is dark green to the point of being black (as stated in the text).  So clearly, the text reinforces the fact that Anhydrous Iron (III) Chloride is NOT Yellow (as confusingly shown in the picture) BUT that it is Dark-Green/Almost Black.  
WHAT FOLLOWS MAY NOT BE ABSOLUTELY TRUE, BUT LIKELY IS and is based on past sample notes: 
I also believe that Anhydrous Iron (III) Chloride can APPEAR to melt at 37 degrees C (according to the Wikipedia page ONLY the Hexahydrate melts at this temperature).  This leads me to conclude that THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE *has a Devil in the detail* IN RELATION TO THE MELTING POINTS OF ANHYDROUS Iron (III) Chloride **AS** there is a tendency for Anhydrous Iron (III) Chloride to become hydrated in air and THEN melt due to its Deliquescence.  Thus, naive attempts to measure the melting point of Anhydrous (III) Chloride in Air ought to take into account that energy will be directed towards evaporating absorbed moisture from the atmosphere AND the Water of Crystallisation (ie: the water that makes hexahydrate hydrated). 
According to the information in the article, what happens is that the HEXAHYDRATE melts when heated, then at 100 degrees C, the water evaporates, at which point the sample becomes SOLID Anhydrous Iron (III) Chloride AND THEN, at 306 degrees C, the sample MELTS AGAIN (TWICE!).  This is notable.  
ASavantDude (talk) 18:33, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

These problems seem to have been fixed now. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:51, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Iron(III) chloride/CommentsTalk:Iron(III) chloride/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Last edited at 21:46, 11 March 2007 (UTC).
Substituted at 19:07, 29 April 2016 (UTC)


### Iron(III) chloride
I tried to improve the article but there may not be sufficient qualified editors to reinstate its GA status. --Smokefoot (talk) 22:23, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Iron(III) chloride/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Steelkamp (talk · contribs) 05:34, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

 
I'm going to have to quick fail this good article review. There is an orange tag on the article which was mentioned in the most recent good article reassessment and is still valid. There are citation needed tags, and unfortunately, not much has changed since the good article reassessment concluded. Some other things I want to point out:

Why does the last image not have a caption?
What does "The natural counterpart of FeCl3" mean?
Steelkamp (talk) 05:34, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

@Steelkamp: Could you please look at the article again? I took care of tags and comments. Keres🌕Luna edits! 15:19, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
I recommend renominating the article. I have already failed this review so another review will need to be opened. Steelkamp (talk) 04:32, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Iron(III) chloride/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Dylnuge (talk · contribs) 18:37, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Hey Keresluna, picking this up as part of the GAN backlog drive! I'll be leaving comments here as I review; feel free to reply to them inline or wait until I'm done and address everything at once, whatever works best for you. Also please feel free to ask any questions or push back on suggestions. Thanks! Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 18:37, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I am very busy in real life right now, so I probably won't respond to most comments. I will try to address comments within the little time I have. Keres🌕Luna edits! 04:13, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
No worries, Keresluna! There's no real deadline on this; 7 days is often used as standard timeframe, but I'm willing to keep things open for longer if you need more time to address comments. If you're at a point where you don't feel there's any time for this right now and Smokefoot is willing to take over as nominator, that also works. Worst case, we can pull this nomination and y'all can re-nominate when it's a better time for you.
Let me know what works best for both of you; my goal here is to help improve the article and ideally get through the GA process, but there's no specific pressure either of you should feel on having to do this right now, and if real life is interceding I totally understand. Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 15:58, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Opening comments
Article is stable (5). No obvious copyvio detected (2d); note that [3] is flagged by Earwig but is clearly content lifted from Wikipedia, down to including the wikilinks (and even using MediaWiki classes in the divs), same goes for [4]. Article is illustrated and media used is appropriately captioned and licensed (6a/6b). Reference format is good (2a).
Three paragraphs are missing any citations: the second paragraph of "Redox reactions", the second paragraph of "Etching and metal cleaning", and the second paragraph of "Organic chemistry". Since these are short paragraphs it's likely the intended citation for them is nearby and just needs to be included at the ends of these paragraphs as well.
Two major things stand out on first read: accessibility and list incorporation. As a technical article it makes sense that some sections will be deeply technical, especially those which essentially require chemistry knowledge to understand. On the other hand, not all of the article needs to assume a background in chemistry. In particular the lead should be readable by someone with limited specialized knowledge, even if they don't know what everything means (I find it helps to imagine the average high school student in the US). For non-technical readers, the key information will be what the compound is and how it's used, so this is especially important to cover in the lead, and the "Uses" section in particular should be accessible by a general audience. Take a look at an article like 1-Pentadecanol for an example of what I'm talking about here—the lead there includes technical language, and the article does not shy away from including significant details likely to be most relevant to specialists, but it avoids describing things in exclusively technical terms and includes a decent summary of how the compound is used in the lead.
Lists should be used only where the article wouldn't be able to better present the information using prose. In this case, I see at least one list (the one in "Organic chemistry") that almost certainly would be improved if it were presented as prose. I'm less sure on the list in "Hydrates" or the list-like formatting of the "Preperation" section; both of these seem more likely to be legitimate usages of lists, but I am not a subject matter expert here so take a look and see if this is the ideal framing.
One more thing here: I notice Smokefoot has written the plurality of the content here (over 1/3rd: [5]) and has been recently active in contributing to this article. I think it'd be helpful to include them in this review process. I bring this up because the nominator is generally responsible for working with the reviewer to shepherd the article through the GA process and in the case where an article has been worked on by multiple people it's helpful to have major contributors participating in the process. Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 19:18, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

As an interested contributer, I am glad to help with this process. I kinda avoid these processes because I seem to often respond in the wrong way or mess up some fussy formatting prettiness.  But I am good for the chem. --Smokefoot (talk) 20:40, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Comments

Issues from GAR delisting and previous GAN include: lead lacking an adequate summary, cleanup tags including missing citations and a section expansion tag in "Safety", and possible issues with list incorporation. The safety section has been slightly expanded and the maintenance tag removed (it may need additional work, but it is definitely improved). Citations have been added extensively, and there seem to not be remaining issues (except the three paragraphs I mentioned above). I share the concerns about the lead (as noted above), but don't see these as particularly hard to fix. Overall, we're in shape to proceed with this review.
Lead: first sentence should describe the compound without simply stating its formula. More information about usages should be given.
(Optional) This is not a GA requirement, but I notice some of the info in the infobox doesn't have the WikiProject Chemistry verify checkmark. I am (as this review should make extremely obvious) not a chemist and don't know enough to do that, but if someone is comfortable double checking the infobox and marking it validated, that'd probably be a nice thing to have.
This electronic configuration places electrons in molecular orbitals — Would "Electrons are configured in molecular orbitals..." work here? The repeated use of "electron" feels wrong.
The first paragraph of the "Structure and properties" section should probably begin by summarizing that iron(III) chlorides can be in anhydrous and hydrated states, since that seems to be core to the organization of the section.
The vapor consists of the dimer Fe2Cl6 (like aluminium chloride) which increasingly dissociates into the monomeric FeCl3 (with D3h point group molecular symmetry) at higher temperatures, in competition with its reversible decomposition to give iron(II) chloride and chlorine gas. — long sentence with several competing ideas and parentheticals; might be good to break it up.
As mentioned above, the list under hydrates seems like it could potentially be converted to prose. This would require expanding the detail on these forms
Aqueous solutions of ferric chloride are characteristically yellow, in contrast to the pale pink solutions of [Fe(H2O)6]3+ — especially here, but as a general example, could be good to give a name to the chemical being compared instead of just using formulas. This is doubly true if they have their own articles that can be linked. As-is, I'm not sure what this is or why it's being compared (at a guess, it's because it lacks a chlorine molecule, to compare the chloride to something else, but I'm definitely not knowledgeable enough in chemistry to adequately guess).
Preparation feels like it's essentially a numbered list in how it describes the process. Would it make sense to break it out into prose describing the process more fully and a numbered list showing exclusively the three reactions?


### Some new revisions
Responding to critique

Issues from GAR delisting and previous GAN include: lead lacking an adequate summary, cleanup tags including missing citations and a section expansion tag in "Safety", and possible issues with list incorporation. The safety section has been slightly expanded and the maintenance tag removed (it may need additional work, but it is definitely improved). Citations have been added extensively, and there seem to not be remaining issues (except the three paragraphs I mentioned above). I share the concerns about the lead (as noted above), but don't see these as particularly hard to fix. Overall, we're in shape to proceed with this review.
Lead: first sentence should describe the compound without simply stating its formula. More information about usages should be given.
slight beefed up this section
(Optional) This is not a GA requirement, but I notice some of the info in the infobox doesn't have the WikiProject Chemistry verify checkmark. I am (as this review should make extremely obvious) not a chemist and don't know enough to do that, but if someone is comfortable double checking the infobox and marking it validated, that'd probably be a nice thing to have.
can get the pros to inspect later
This electronic configuration places electrons in molecular orbitals — Would "Electrons are configured in molecular orbitals..." work here? The repeated use of "electron" feels wrong.
rephrased and expanded
The first paragraph of the "Structure and properties" section should probably begin by summarizing that iron(III) chlorides can be in anhydrous and hydrated states, since that seems to be core to the organization of the section.
OK, done
The vapor consists of the dimer Fe2Cl6 (like aluminium chloride) which increasingly dissociates into the monomeric FeCl3 (with D3h point group molecular symmetry) at higher temperatures, in competition with its reversible decomposition to give iron(II) chloride and chlorine gas. — long sentence with several competing ideas and parentheticals; might be good to break it up.
I tried
As mentioned above, the list under hydrates seems like it could potentially be converted to prose. This would require expanding the detail on these forms
Many listy things are more prose-y
Aqueous solutions of ferric chloride are characteristically yellow, in contrast to the pale pink solutions of [Fe(H2O)6]3+ — especially here, but as a general example, could be good to give a name to the chemical being compared instead of just using formulas. This is doubly true if they have their own articles that can be linked. As-is, I'm not sure what this is or why it's being compared (at a guess, it's because it lacks a chlorine molecule, to compare the chloride to something else, but I'm definitely not knowledgeable enough in chemistry to adequately guess).
Attempted to correct
Preparation feels like it's essentially a numbered list in how it describes the process. Would it make sense to break it out into prose describing the process more fully and a numbered list showing exclusively the three reactions?
More prose-like now

--Smokefoot (talk) 18:02, 3 September 2023 (UTC)


### Status?
@Keresluna, Dylnuge,  and Smokefoot: Nothing has happened on this review in almost 3 months.  Can this be wrapped up soon?  RoySmith (talk) 14:49, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

My apologies; I've been inactive for a bit recently for various reasons but am happy to resume the review and should have time to get to it this weekend. Sorry for letting this stall out for so long here! Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 06:59, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
@Dylnuge are you going to be able to complete this, or should I close it out so somebody else can review it? RoySmith (talk) 15:28, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
I've declared this review abandoned per WP:GAN/I#N4a.  RoySmith (talk) 18:23, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Iron(III) chloride/GA3. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Tea with toast (talk · contribs) 05:24, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Apologies, things in the real world have been busier than anticipated. I hope to be able to finish this review by the end of the coming weekend. Cheers, Tea with toast (話) 04:02, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

No worries, I understand. Keres🌕Luna edits! 16:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
@Tea with toast: Do you have any more updates? Keres🌕Luna edits! 21:27, 12 February 2024 (UTC)