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chloric1
International Hazard
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Registered: 8-10-2003
Location: GroupVII of the periodic table
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Mood: Stoichiometrically Balanced
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wow Tim I have only experienced this on the very muggiest of days. We just got a Canadian airmass and our humidty is about 39%. Sweet! Works in
favor of chemistry. This is in contrast to a dewpoint of 75 fahrenheit yesterday. Man that was rough! I could rinse off a beaker with not so cool water and it would fog up instantly. Could not tell if I did an adequate
job of cleaning!
[Edited on 8/21/2005 by chloric1]
Fellow molecular manipulator
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12AX7
Post Harlot
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Registered: 8-3-2005
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Well the thing with our basement is it's an old masonry foundation that sits right in the dirt, so it's always basically 90% humidity.  Outside, today was beautiful though 
Tim
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Element
Harmless
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Registered: 5-4-2010
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Back on topic!
Alright, so I've got the same problem:
My draino cleaner contains NaOH, NaNO3, NaCl and aluminum chips (so said my MSDS, I didn't open the bottle yet, as I know NaOH is hygroscopic.)
Unfortunately, there seems to be no way we could easily separate those compounds by selective precipitation, they all dissolve completely in water
(and I guess their solubilities in other solvents would be the same between themselves).
Maybe adding another cation could work... I'm still vaguely looking into that, but nothing seems to be very effective. Would there be any chemical
reaction or separation process to isolate NaOH and NaNO3 (or only one of those)?
I've thought a bit of electrolysis... maybe oxydizing OH- into H20 and O2 would get rid of NaOH (but then again, I'd like to keep it!), leaving me
with a NaNO3/NaCl solution... but that doesn't seem to be the most efficient way, nor the easiest (electrochemistry hates chemists)
Thank you!
Christian
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12AX7
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Mechanical seperation is easiest. Most types have a flake sort of NaNO3, which is easily blown away with air (dry air is a must!). The aluminum can
be seperated by gravity, or eddy current repulsion (easy for me to say, I've got an induction heater).
Ba(NO3)2 is handy for isolating nitrates, but that's if you have an excess of nitrate already. It's not going to work well with hydroxide or
carbonate around, since those will precipitate instead.
Tim
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Element
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Registered: 5-4-2010
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Thanks 12AX7!
Well, I've tested it up and for further reference about this particular product (Crystal Draino):
The blue "balls" are most probably the NaNO3, as it is weakly basic and the blue "salt" (there really are three distinguishable components in there)
should be NaOH as it is extremely basic (very very few of it in a test tube turned water to pH 13~14). And then obviously there are the aluminum
shards. As for the NaCl, I have no idea... probably mixed up with one or the other... it's supposed to be about 10-15% anyway, so it's no very big
deal.
Well, those are only my humble observations. Anyway I stand no better as this would take a veeery long time to separate little balls from salt (plus,
they tend to stick together, probably because of the humidity). As to "blow away", I don't really understand what you mean... Or at least, I can't
think of how I'd separate it with household equipement! I'll still "work" on that... Maybe I could just add a weak acid, so to get rid of NaOH... But
then again, I first bought it FOR the NaOH  Both this and NaNO3 would be cool to
obtain really.
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