Synthesizing Copper(II) Sulfate with Copper and Sulfuric Acid

The following is my attempt to synthesize Cupric Sulfate from Sulfuric Acid and Copper rods. I am not aware of all of the details of why this reaction works, but here is what I came up with from internet research.

Procedure -

  1. Get Sulfuric Acid. This can be extracted from a car battery or can be purchased pure from automotive shops. If you get it from a car battery I think it is necessary to filter it in some way. It can be filtered with a coffee filter placed inside a funnel.
  2. Place the sulfuric acid in a plastic bowl or a glass container. The sulfuric acid will not be able to eat through glass or plastic.
  3. Get a car battery charger.
  4. Get some pieces of copper wire to function as electrodes. This reaction will eat through the copper very quickly
  5. Place the sulfuric acid into your container. Attach copper to each of the clips on the car battery charger and place them in the sulfuric acid. You must make sure that the copper electrodes do not touch
  6. Leave the electrodes there for two days
  7. After the electrodes have been running for a few days, put the electrodes into the liquid. Put the liquid into a capped container and let it sit for a few weeks
  8. Evaporate it. The resulting crystals will be Copper(II) Sulfate

The image above shows the results at about two hours in That is, electricity has been supplied to the electrodes for about two hours. I now realize that I probably should have kept a more precise account of the time. I will be sure to do this in the future. After the copper electrodes were in sulfuric acid for a few hours the solution turned light blue, I believe this verifies the presence of Copper(II) Sulfate, i am unaware of how concentrated it really is. The copper electrode on the positive terminal completely melted away. There is a copper colored sludge on both terminals. When I lifted up both electrodes most of the sludge fell off the copper terminal into the liquid below. The photograph above, and all of the photographs after this text, were taken after I had already lifted the terminals out once. The negative terminal appears to be in the same condition as it was when it was initially placed into the Sulfuric Acid. The negative terminal had the largest amount of Copper precipitate on it. It was completely coated with a cone of copper sludge leading all the way to the bottom of the beaker. For this reason it is apparent that copper atoms are moving form the positive terminal to the negative terminal.
Because the copper electrode on the positive side had been completely dissolved I replaced it with a new electrode. I folded the copper over once so that there was more copper on the positive terminal. I also added some extra lead so that the clips for the battery charger were no longer directly over the liquid. Acid was splashing up and eating away at the clips.
I am really curious about all of this copper build up at the bottom of the beaker. I was not sure if I really needed to put a new electrode in with how much of this copper sludge was at the bottom. From the information I have gotten from various sites on the internet, I will spend two days electrode time, and a few weeks without electricity applied to the electrodes. at this time I will dump the liquid into another container and cap it off. I am curious what will happen to all of the copper precipitate in this time. My concern is that there could already more than enough copper in this solution after two hours, and it is time to cap it off and let it sit for two weeks. I only used 200ml of Sulfuric Acid, which is much less than the amount of a car battery.