the identity of the “surfactant” in clear ammoni; and, what solvent separation should leave it behind ?

Quote: Originally posted by Praxichys

If it is any of the following brands of "clear ammonia": Ahold, Always Save, Americas Choice, Supervalu, Everyday Living, First Street, Giant, Great Value, Hannaford, Home 360, Home Remedy Plus, Homelife, Hy-Top, Kroger Home Sense, Laura Lynn, Market Basket, Miejer, Walgreens, Parade, Price Rite, Propride, Publix, Pure Bright, Raley, Ralphs Home Sense, Red Max, Shoprite, Stater Bros, Stop N Shop, Sunny Select, Topjob, Wegmans, Western Family, Western Family Shurfine, Fred Meyer, Food Club, DG Home, Sunbrite (This includes the vast majority of domestic grocery-store ammonia) It is made by KIK products, and the MSDS is here: http://sds.chemtel.net/docs/KIK%20International%20Inc-000290... I wouldn't get it. It's less than 3% ammonia, and contains surfactants. A much better choice is ACE Hardware "Janitor Strength" ammonia. If you have an ACE in your area, go there. I get this stuff all the time. It's 10% ammonia in plain water. http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/attachment.php?attachme...

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and it left a slight film. i smeared it with my finger and it smells like cheese, parmigiana.
it smells like a milder smelling gibberellic acid (i have some that smells like strong parmigiana cheese :haha )



MY QUESTION is what surfactant or surfactants are in the ammonia? and how can i separate it out decently in solvent layers?

(also i couldn’t link to the pdf and didn’t track it down yet)

i know that ace has 10% ammonia and i can get 30% from ebay if i remember correctly; but with the crap standard, how can the surfactant be left in a solvent layer?

say an amine is dissolved in IPA and ammonia is added, perhaps caffeine (which is sublimable) or maybe yohimbe bases from ground bark, or whatever else.

anyway say a person wants to mess around with transferring stuff between layers and getting fats or plant stuff separated just for fun (also for purpose, but alot for fun). using the base amines (hcl salts and juggling could come later but i thought to just stay simple and think of the bases first, and think about pH and probes later)

my plan was IPA extraction in different fractions, and evaporation. and continued mechanical partitioning the stuff that deposited and redissolving parts in separate dishes, all by the angle of the container allowing a sloped evaporation field/deposit for lack of a better explanation.

my thoughts were that maybe adding the ammonia to the IPA could allow some more amines to be in solution and change the way that the materials were all deposited as the solution evaporated.

but; with weak ammonia, the water would hinder evaporation and the IPA might leave quicker than the water, and change the way things were deposited.

i had an idea that i wanted to try; which was to salt out the IPA with ammonium chloride , just to mess around and see if i could continually extract into the ammonia aqueous layer and/or the IPA (with NH3 presumably ?) layer, (and maybe a xylene layer for the fats but i was unsure of IPA and NH3 in xylene and didn’t find data yet) and let the aqueous layer sublime the ammonium chloride over a while or maybe under vacuum at a warm temperature.

i just thought this would be cool, and j guess depending on the amines, if there were different types, they could prefer one layer or the other, and hopefully none in the xylene

but i was just wondering about the surfactants and how to remove them, because it seems like they would hang out in all layers if ionic or anionic

it seems the trouble is unlikely even close to worth it unless looking to gain skills for future challenges or discovery ;
from looking at

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24210557/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233232136_Separatio...

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es980737c

but if anyone knows any easy separations, please let me know.
thanks




[Edited on 18-6-2019 by pomegranate]