johncena - 9-4-2016 at 03:35
Hey everyone! I got bored and decided to make a little bit of sodium. The first method I used was simply reacting some not very fine aluminum powder
with NaOH and luckily it worked. However, the quantities of the sodium were quite low and it was contamined with a lot of unreacted aluminum, NaOH and
NaALO2. So, I decided to take on on a much better method - electrolysis.
I found an old somewhat broken car battery charger - most of the scales, switches and potentiometers of it are broken, but it still can transform the
electricity and still gives high current. Firstly, I got a clay pot (or a cup), put some NaOH in it, stuck 2 iron nails, started the charger and began
heating the NaOH with a blow torch. I had trouble with the porcelain pot and I conducted the experiment on a flat rock. At the first moment, lots of
bubbles appeared and on the cathode big molten drops of sodium started to appear. I was satisfied with that, collected it and boom - thought this
method would work, but it didn't - shortly after I stopped heating the hydroxide, it solidified again and the reaction died. I tried it couple more
times, but again I failed - even no sodium appeared. I don't know why I'm failing, probably because of the power supply. But because it can't be
regulated, it should produce tons of amps. I'll try checking the current, but if you have any ideas how to improve this, please tell me!
j_sum1 - 9-4-2016 at 03:54
This procedure is very temperature sensitive.
The definitive work can be found here:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=9797
Also two relevant threads that are stickied:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=2103
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=2105
There are undoubtedly other threads on the topic too.
I think this should help.
Happy reading.