Draeger - 29-4-2020 at 06:03
So, I wanted to make some sodium silicate by dissolving silica gel pearls in sodium hydroxide. I only had orange dyed pearls, though, so now the dye
is dissolved in the water. Is there any way to separate the dye from the product? According to Wikipedia, the dye is methyl violet, by the way.
SWIM - 29-4-2020 at 14:15
Many dyes adhere pretty strongly to activated charcoal, you might be able to adsorb it.
If you have an ozone source maybe you could oxidize it away?
Shouldn't hurt the sodium silicate any.
Maybe H2O2?
Sodium silicate should be able to take lots of heat, so maybe you could burn the dye out like burning the organics out of potash.
formallydehyde - 29-4-2020 at 22:34
If you can't get the undyed silica gel for some reason, I agree with SWIM's suggestion to try hydrogen peroxide, since that could just be removed by
heating. That sounds like it would be the easiest way if you can't start over with new gel.
I use concentrated bleach to remove crystal violet (one of the methyl violets) from glassware pretty often and it's effective for that, but I can't
think of a great way that sodium hypochlorite could be removed safely and without generating a soluble salt.
AJKOER - 1-5-2020 at 17:07
Add B-12 or B-Complex and even better, add nano-ZnO (at home prepared, no less, see https://ninithi.wordpress.com/2015/08/06/make-your-own-photo... ).
Now, more colorful!
Let sunlight work on it, and alas colorless!! Source: https://jurnal.ugm.ac.id/ijc/article/view/33470/20955 .
Assuming Sodium silicate will resist attack by radicals, but if it is that would also be interesting!!!
[Edited on 2-5-2020 by AJKOER]
draculic acid69 - 2-5-2020 at 02:26
What about burning it out or acetone/solvent wash
unionised - 2-5-2020 at 05:34
I suspect that you might be trying to remove Fe(III) by oxidation.
Good luck.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8247237B2/en
It might be instructive to do a weak acid wash on some of the original gel.
[Edited on 2-5-20 by unionised]