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I've been looking into making pure copper (I) chloride, but using ascorbic acid is relatively expensive for me. I'd also like to avoid having water in any part of the synthesis to minimize the contamination with copper (II) chloride. Therefore, I came up with the idea of doing the synthesis in ethanol and bubbling through H2 according to the reaction

$$\ce{2 CuCl2 (aq) + H2 (g) -> 2 CuCl (s) + 2 HCl (g)}$$

So my main question is: could this work?

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    $\begingroup$ I suppose it would be kinetically blocked. BTW CuCl2 in ethanol would not be (aq). $\endgroup$
    – Poutnik
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 18:28
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    $\begingroup$ Sounds possible as the solubility of CuCl2 in EtOH is 53g/100ml sciencemadness.org/smwiki/index.php/Copper(II)_chloride. There is a reduction procedure using aq sulfite here: wwwchem.uwimona.edu.jm/lab_manuals/c1901exp35.html $\endgroup$
    – Waylander
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 19:07
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    $\begingroup$ You will end up in metallic copper if H2 is heated. Hydrogen is a powerful reducing agent at high temperature. Bubbling H2 won't do anything. These experiments have a safety issue and should never be performed without proper qualification. $\endgroup$
    – ACR
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 19:47

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There are better ways to do it. Copper (II) can be reduced to copper (I) with a variety of reagents, especially in the presence of a soft-base halide ion such as chloride which precipitates or complexes with the copper (I) (which is a good way to prevent "overshooting" to metallic copper). Some specific approaches can be seen here.

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