Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Potassium Chlorate from Potassium Hypochlorite

DFliyerz - 20-1-2015 at 11:06

I've been having trouble making potassium chlorate in situ due to my electrolytic cell cooling during the night, and was wondering; if you used potassium hypochlorite instead of sodium hypochlorite in the process involving boiling the hypochlorite and adding potassium chloride, could you skip the step of adding potassium chloride?

Zyklon-A - 20-1-2015 at 11:12

That's what I generally do. My cell is at around 60°C in the day and 40°C at night, I used to heat it on a hot plate but now I just boil it afterward, dissolve more chloride and let it go some more.
You should use the same thread for all you posts and not make a new one for every question that has already been answered a million times anyway.
The real question is, are you still using you ~20 volt power supply, or did you get something that will actually work yet?

DFliyerz - 20-1-2015 at 11:23

Good idea; and I'm still using my 5a/30v power supply. It's proved to be more than capable of generating enough heat during the day, even melting the electrical tape I used to connect a graphite electrode to some wire!

Molecular Manipulations - 20-1-2015 at 11:31

So what? Melting all the electrical tape in the world is of no use if it doesn't work for what you need it for.


DFliyerz - 20-1-2015 at 12:08

Well, to be honest, I just haven't gotten a complete perfect reaction. I've gotten some chlorate crystals to precipitate out of a reaction, but there were other issues with it, such as rust contamination. Other ones were having problems with me needing to turn off the power for a bit to make repairs, resulting in some potassium chloride settling to the bottom.