cheap table salt

Quote: Originally posted by Velzee

The anticaking agent is sodium ferrocyanide(reference: https://groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/product/M-savers-Tab...).

Thanks, i looked and looked on the page in the link and didnt see it!!

I wondered why you linked to it (apart from to annoy me with the price increase ), then i spotted the bit its mentioned.

Thanks for that i couldnt spot it anywhere lol. The amount must be tiny unfortunately. At least i can completely ignore its presence

Still in a grumble its gone up 8p or whatever! Shame our local store dosnt do potassium chloride , they do lo salt but that is something like 70% sodium and 29% potassium chloride.

Its also branded so costs more than just ordering potassium chloride. They do a home brand dishwasher tablet, no idea whats in it, but use it a few times and it seems to etch your glass! Pretty good as a crud soaker but not great for long term use.

If you want potassium chloride, try to find fertililizer with rating N:K = 0:0:60. This is fairly pure KCl, good enough for electrolysis. It can be purchased in 25 kg bags and is dirt cheap. You may have to search for a while, but it should be present in some local shops for agrarian products. Best chance in shops for real farmers, not the gardening shops for urban people.

Quote: Originally posted by woelen

If you want potassium chloride, try to find fertililizer with rating N:K = 0:0:60. This is fairly pure KCl, good enough for electrolysis. It can be purchased in 25 kg bags and is dirt cheap. You may have to search for a while, but it should be present in some local shops for agrarian products. Best chance in shops for real farmers, not the gardening shops for urban people.

Thanks for that! We have a limited range of shops where we are, but farming supplies are pretty common in most parts of Scotland except the large cities.

We have one not so far away so i checked this morning, they dont have any but can order it and the price is pretty good. I also discovered that phosphoric acid (85% i think), is available from them in 25 ltr drums for around £30.

Its alot of acid but the price is good, i will see if anyone i know at the new chemistry club at school wants to buy some with me. They sell a few things but the bulk makes it a bit awkward to handle, unless i sell of the excess i guess.

One thing they dont sell is Nitrates! I found this odd so asked why, apparently i live in something called a nitrate sensitive area and farmers are not meant to use nitrates directly on the soil!!

Bloody Governments interfering, not everyone wanting nitrates is going to use them as fertilizer!! .

Shops and supermarkets are a waste of time around here, but i am slowly finding good online sources for various things. Shopping now takes ages as i go label reading lol.

A trip to school while its closed for the Holidays (back next week), they are replacing equipment in the science block, this means moving old stuff to more obscure cupboards!!

I managed to bag a few unusual item's and another couple of burettes! I will post a pic of a non used one with a calibration certificate!! The certificate was granted in 1960 something!

How many have a unused certificated burette from the medieval days! , well ok maybe not that long ago but nearly.

Now that is what you call a result!

Its amazing what you find in farm suppliers, mostly its not on display and you have to go hunting through racks etc out the back.

The main problem is the size, price wise its almost as cheap to buy 25Kg as it is to buy 500g online! But who actually needs 25Kg? Unless i can offload what i dont need.

Its a bit like pottery shops, they use some odd names for things, so i have been looking them up to see what they are.

Got my exam results yesterday! my weeks of preparing my parents for a bit of bad news seemed to pay off .

Turns out my dire warnings of possible bad results ended up unfounded , this naturally gave them a huge sigh of relief and me a gift of £300 to spend on solvents and chemicals.

The bad news is, when you have zero money you can name two dozen chemicals you must have, when you have some money it is suddenly very hard to decide what you really want/need!

Definitely going to buy some solvents and a decent filter funnel. J SUM1 and his competition has made me think about what i can buy that will give me the most reagents.

I didnt think my results would be particularly bad, but i figured no harm in preparing the parents for bad news lol, seems they were relieved and pleased in the end...........

[Edited on 10-8-2016 by NEMO-Chemistry]

@NEMO-Chemistry: You have very cool parents if they give you money for buying chemicals and glassware. Tell them that one of the oldies on sciencemadness told that to you

Pottery suppliers indeed are very nice and they sell quite a lot of chemicals. Try to buy small quantities (or share them with others), so that you get as many as possible different reagents. If you have test tubes and a small heater, then you can do a lot of experiments on a micro scale and then you only need small quantities.
The following transition metals have very interesting chemistry:
- cobalt (pottery: cobalt carbonate or cobalt sulfate, do NOT buy the oxide, it is extremely inert)
- copper (pottery: copper oxide or copper carbonate)
- nickel (nickel carbonate, the oxide can be used, but dissolves with difficulty)
- chromium (chrome alum on eBay, do NOT buy chromium(III) oxide, it is extremely inert)
- vanadium(pottery: vanadium pentoxide)
- manganese (eBay: potassium permanganate; pottery: manganese dioxide)
- iron (ferric chloride in an electronics hobby shop at printed circuit board etchant; ferrous sulfate in gardening shops as fertilizer or as snail-killer)

Other chemicals you can buy locally:
- sodium peroxodisulfate (another etchant, to be purchased at electronics hobby shops)
- ammonium peroxodisulfate (yet another etchant)
- sodium metabisulfite or potassium metabisulfite (shop for wine making and beer brewing)
- lactic acid (shop for wine making)
- sodium bisulfate (swimming pool pH-minus)
- TCCA (swimming pool chlorinator)
- Na-DCCA (swimming pool chlorinator)
- oxone (swimming pool oxygenator, chlorine-free swimming pool cleaner)
- alum (gardening shops, fertilizer for hortensias in order to get blue flowers instead of pink flowers)