Melting Ytterbium metal

Quote: Originally posted by Tsjerk

I'm pretty sure you will oxidize the crap out of it at 800+, at RT it reacts with water and the powder is flammable.

I love fungi for the reason you hate them . I have seen them grow on heavy metal/alcohol/cyanide waste which was nicely concentrated as well. They are really tuff.

Could you heat/melt your sodium under the oil just before closing the lid? That should take care of them. Or maybe get a new container, heat that in boiling water, dry in an oven at 180, and fill with preheated (and cooled down again if it is not borosilicate) and then store? If you fill the container almost till the top you could heat it again to be sure, liquid doesn't expand that much.

Somewhere in the process, before storing, you will have to either heat or wash your sodium.. The sodium won't make the oil basic enough to kill the fungus, and spores will happily stick on it in the absence of water.

Two times half an hour at 100 degrees with 24 hours in between will kill anything in an aqueous environment. Twenty minutes at 120 will also kill anything, but you need a pressure vessel. When dry though (as in your sodium dried oil) you will need three hours at 180 to kill everything. Sterilization of dry glass is a pain..

Edit: This reminds me of seeing a completely abandoned diep frying pan, just full of oil, boiled to dryness, left for a year in a dry garage. It was full of something, couldn't have been anything else than a fungus. But the garage was quite humid, I would never have thought they could grow in sodium dried oil. Is the sodium still shiny? Could you take a picture? I would love to see it (the fungus). Sorry

[Edited on 23-1-2020 by Tsjerk]

[Edited on 23-1-2020 by Tsjerk]

Yeah I will take a picture, if it entertains you why not

For the record: I don't dislike mushrooms either, they are wonderful creatures, I just don't want them on my reagents

Thanks! They are everywhere You just need the right one in the right place. I once made a PI who was organizing my practical courses very happy. She had all students take growing plates home and "air" them in their student homes . She had us test all species for surfactant production. I told her afterwards I had this nasty bright orange fungus growing on my spend coffee. No surfactants came up during the course but the orange one was interesting for a while, nothing came out in the end as far as I know.

Never have seen the orange one anywhere else since then.

Quote: Originally posted by karlos³

Damn, my jar of sodium in petrol oil got infected(infested?) by a petrol mushroom, I still haven't gotten rid of that damn mushroom, and I have changed the oil at least eleven times in the last eight years! I don't know where that thing comes from though? Edit: could be a petrol microbe though, never characterised that, just want to get rid of it. Changed the original petrol oil to naphtha, to pure petrol ether, and back to naphtha, etc. Damn diesel bugs... [Edited on 23-1-2020 by karlos³]

Maybe you also got such a petrol bug in there?
It starts with the paraffin oil getting cloudy, soon after you will see parts where the cloudiness is more concentrated(mycelium maybe, or at least an aggregation of microorganisms).
In the end it will look overall milky... I have to admit, after noticing that the metal still remains shiny(maybe the "bugs" eat up all the oxygen before it reaches the metal?), I haven't cared about removing them.
Tsjerk will probably be happy about the picture, because the last oil change is more than a year ago

Back in my microbiology classes, they always told us the most colorful ones are often pathogenic with this sort of "air plates"(we also did plates where we pressed standard everyday objects like keys on them, those came out dirty, one wouldn't believe the wide array of stuff that grew on them!).

E: tomorrow, I need to get to my storage room and will make a picture of it

[Edited on 23-1-2020 by karlos³]

Quote: Originally posted by karlos³

Damn, my jar of sodium in petrol oil got infected(infested?) by a petrol mushroom, I still haven't gotten rid of that damn mushroom, and I have changed the oil at least eleven times in the last eight years! I don't know where that thing comes from though? Edit: could be a petrol microbe though, never characterised that, just want to get rid of it. Changed the original petrol oil to naphtha, to pure petrol ether, and back to naphtha, etc. Damn diesel bugs... [Edited on 23-1-2020 by karlos³]

Quote: Originally posted by draculic acid69

Quote: Originally posted by karlos³   Damn, my jar of sodium in petrol oil got infected(infested?) by a petrol mushroom, I still haven't gotten rid of that damn mushroom, and I have changed the oil at least eleven times in the last eight years! I don't know where that thing comes from though? Edit: could be a petrol microbe though, never characterised that, just want to get rid of it. Changed the original petrol oil to naphtha, to pure petrol ether, and back to naphtha, etc. Damn diesel bugs... [Edited on 23-1-2020 by karlos³] Heard of diesel bugs but not petrol mushrooms wtf? R u guys being serious? [Edited on 24-1-2020 by draculic acid69]