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Evaporate Core

Evaporate Core

What exactly is inside an alkaline battery?

For an experiment at home where I want to synthesize potassium permanganate, I broke open an alkaline battery. I had read that an alkaline battery contains MnO2, zinc and KOH as the electrolite. When I opened it, I found the black clumpy solid which is the MnO2 and I definitely found the KOH. At the core of the battery however, I found this silvery paste. I presumed this was zinc powder in water or something. So I thought, why not boil of the water and be left with zinc powder. This was not such a good idea; at first, the water evaporated away, but then the metal itself started burning. The substance was glowing very intensely and some white fumes were produced that didn't smell like anything. The product was this yellow clumpy solid/powder which could be nothing but an oxide of some sort. However, when I went online, it said zinc oxide is white. My question is, what was in the battery that resulted in the yellow color?

Alkaline batteries contain zinc as the anode and MnO2 as the cathode, with KOH as the electrolyte. However, the casing itself can also leach into the contents, especially when considering that KOH is a very strong base and can attack metals. The yellow colour may be due to trace contaminants in the zinc oxide you formed.

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