Daffodile - 7-3-2018 at 12:55
Usually I buy a lye drain opener that they sell for hair and and stuff that accumulates in drains.
Bought some Drano instead today, noticed several things. The material contained some:
-larger white beads I assume is sodium hydroxide
-small crystals
-aluminum flakes
-dye powder
If you have the patience, you could separate them with tweezers, which might be worth the time since the msds sheet says there are approximately equal
amounts of sodium hydroxide and sodium nitrate.
Or you could pour it in water, let the aluminum react with the Hydroxide, and then somehow separate the aluminate and nitrate by crystallizing from
different solvents. Any ideas? This would be a great source for nitrates if theres a good way of doing it.
Akhil jain - 7-3-2018 at 13:07
See I don't know what is that product that you have but
Remember this reaction
8NaOH + 8Al + 3KNO3 + 2H2O → 8NaAlO2 + 3NH3 + 3KOH
You can understand this reaction in following steps
NaOH + Al + H2O → NaAlO2 + 3[H] ×8
KNO3 + 8[H] → KOH + NH3 + 2H2O ×3
In your case it is sodium nitrate but reaction will be same. I hope you have understood
[Edited on 7-3-2018 by Akhil jain]
ELRIC - 7-3-2018 at 13:10
Try putting it on something like a baking tray that has raised sides and hold it at a slight angle and tap the bottom with you’re fingers. You’ll
prolly have to adjust the angle here or there to find what works best. Then the prills should separate from the nitrate and Al.
[Edited on 7-3-2018 by ELRIC]
Daffodile - 7-3-2018 at 16:04
I separated the aluminum, dissolved it all in water, and neutralized the solution with hydrochloric acid. The idea is to then use ethanol to separate
the nitrate from the salt, however I ran out of ethanol not long ago and I just evaporated everything and mixed with brown sugar (out of sugar also)
and ground together to see if I could get a reaction. No reaction obviously, although this could be attributed to my specific methods. Can someone
with a lab try doing this extraction? I'm staying on the uni residence right now so I can't do an awful lot.
Amos - 7-3-2018 at 21:59
This product is one of the first things I bought when I began the hobby. I opened the container and was so horrified I almost cried; I'd spent a
substantial portion of my budget and didn't even read the MSDS first. I did, however, painstakingly pick out all of the sodium nitrate pieces (I
believe these are the larger and more randomly sized spheres in the mixture, but this was 5 years ago) and dissolved them in water. I was greeted a
few days later with brilliantly formed little pyramidal crystals of pure nitrate at the bottom of my beaker, and this was what I used to make my first
nitric acid using the copper method. If you're able to buy that, though, you can likely just find potassium nitrate in a Lowe's or Home Depot as stump
remover, if you want a pure nitrate salt.
[Edited on 3-8-2018 by Amos]