Lithium hydride can be used to prepare other useful hydrides. Beryllium hydride is one of them. Suggest a route for the preparation of beryllium hydride starting from lithium hydride. Write chemical equations involved in the process.

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Solution

$B e H_{2}$ cannot be prepared directly by heating powdered beryllium with hydrogen. It can, however, be prepared from the corresponding halides by reduction with complex alkali metal hydrides such as lithium aluminium hydride as follows.

Lithium hydride reacts with anhydrous aluminium chloride in presence of ether to form $L i A l H_{4}$ , lithium aluminium hydride.

$8 L i H + A l_{2} C l_{6} \to 2 L i A l H_{4} + 6 L i C l$

$L i A l H_{4} r e a c t s w i t h B e C l_{2} t o f o r m B e H_{2}$ .

$2 B e C l_{2} + L i A l H_{4} \to 2 B e H_{2} + L i C l + A l C l_{3}$

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