Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Cleaning glassware after chemical garden

wotaen - 21-9-2016 at 23:59

Hi All, I made nice little garden as a demo for my son in a few beakers. Iron(III) Chloride is particularly stubborn to clean. It's as if it was stuck to the glass. Even scraping off doesn't work well. Any tips for getting rid of it?

Thanks

Metacelsus - 22-9-2016 at 05:43

Acid will remove iron stains, in my experience.

MrHomeScientist - 22-9-2016 at 05:44

Oxalic acid, in particular.

DraconicAcid - 22-9-2016 at 07:44

Quote: Originally posted by Metacelsus  
Acid will remove iron stains, in my experience.


Yeah, but it's not the iron(III) chloride that he's trying to remove; it's the iron silicate that formed in the chemical garden.

I find the best thing to do with that reaction is to only do it in glassware that I don't care about.

zwt - 22-9-2016 at 15:12

I once had an old forgotten Bomex Erlenmeyer flask with some small deposits of what I suspect was copper silicate. Standard glassware cleaning solutions did nothing so, not being particularly attached to the flask, I filled it with Whink rust remover. The deposits were gone within minutes, and while the flask did not appear etched (it was crystal clear afterward, and didn't even have a ring where the liquid level was), it's possible some amount of the flask was also dissolved.

[Edited on 22-9-2016 by zwt]

wotaen - 22-9-2016 at 22:18

Quote: Originally posted by zwt  
I once had an old forgotten Bomex Erlenmeyer flask with some small deposits of what I suspect was copper silicate. Standard glassware cleaning solutions did nothing so, not being particularly attached to the flask, I filled it with Whink rust remover. The deposits were gone within minutes, and while the flask did not appear etched (it was crystal clear afterward, and didn't even have a ring where the liquid level was), it's possible some amount of the flask was also dissolved.

[Edited on 22-9-2016 by zwt]


I could not find any particular details on iron silicate solubility,
the SDS on this Whink cleaner says that it's just dilute HF. I'm surprised that I can find this as a product. Will dig around to find something similar in EU. Thanks