| What's wrong with colourless, distilled vinegar and either slaked lime or garden lime (usually ground limestone). Add an excess of the lime, leave to
stand for a week or two, heat to boiling and cool to make it easier to filter, filter and then evaporate down. Stop evaporating when the liquid starts
to form a crystalline skin, cool and then allow to evaporate slowly in a shallow bowl. Long colourless prisms form slowly as the liquid evaporates.
Alternatively evaporate on a water bath in a strong draft with constant stirring to obtain it as breadcrumb-like granules. I used to evaporate the
solution in shallow glass pyrex tray-like piece of cookware on top of our central heating boiler. In winter this runs at about 40-45 C for months on
end and eventually evaporation reached the point where colourless prisms an inch or more in length form. Calcium acetate monohydrate like the
comparable strontium, barium, nickel etc acetates seems to have an almost flat temperature v solubility relationship so you can't crystallise it by
cooling a saturated solution and you can't precipitate it with alcohol because it forms a terrible gel. |
