A Halogenated Substance
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How can I boil off water from a calcium chloride solution
What's was the size of your container? By using a larger container, using stirring, and maybe blowing a fan over the solution, you could minimize
'overflowing'.
Were you also keeping track of the temperature? If you use too high a temperature, the boiling may get too vigorous.
Potentially, there could also be excess HCl boiling out of solution...
Did you use a stoichiometric amount of HCl solution or an excess?
Details would help.
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ferrousexplosive
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It is quite dificult since its a delisquesent substance, it absrobes humidity from air to form a solution, depending in the use you have for it there
are some ways, if you are going to use it ti dry another compound like i almost always do, i recomend you to put it in a oven at low temperature
(obviously enough to evaporate water) for like an hour and a half, or when you see its dry, then check if its enogh dry. Depending in the purity you
may hope to use it in synthesis you could use another salt or substance even MORE delisquesent than CaCl2 to dry it completely.
I usually store it in a tight cap jar or bottle, right after getting it out from the oven. The first time i let it like for 5 minutes before putting
it in the jar, and it was a LIQUID again, for the temperature it had though.
I hope this helps you, sorry for my english.
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NEMO-Chemistry
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I tried this with a microwave, to be really honest i started with calcium carbonate and HCL. I did it fairly large scale and what I got at the end of
alot of work was not really worth it.
I like making reagents but I got to say I honestly think this is one best purchased, others may have had alot more luck that me but it was a complete
mare to get dry.
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Chemetix
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I had some on a hotplate drying as this post came up; as it turns out hitting it with a bit of microwave energy to get it to speed up the process
works. Then just keep giving the syrupy mixture a bit of a stir as the bottom drys up while on a hotplate. After a while the mix reaches a point where
it has some lumps that stay slightly hydrated.
At this point I put it in the freezer, the freezer elements are cold enough to reduce the vapour pressure lower than the CaCl2. Dried it fine!
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JJay
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CaCl2 can form a hexahydrate at low temperatures, crystallizing while still containing large amounts of water. The crystals will melt very easily if
heated. If you heat it on low heat in an oven, it will slowly dry out, allowing you to crank up the heat. I haven't tried it with calcium chloride in
particular, but for many salts if you drive off the water too fast it will bump and make a big mess in your oven. I have little doubt that calcium
chloride does the same.
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NEMO-Chemistry
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There you go i learnt something useful!!! i made mine from sea shells, just as a general purpose desiccant for the desiccator. I didnt have access to
a normal oven, but i have just won a ultra cheap used kitchen on ebay  . i want
the cupboards etc for my lab, but it also comes with a crap oven,fridge and AND DISHWASHER!! Deep joy and happiness.
£35 all in but I have to go collect it. I have a microwave but the addition of a small oven would be really handy.
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fluorescence
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I'm not sure if you can really dry CaCl2 that easily. Many chlorides like LiCl cannot be dried that easily. There are methods like the HCl method
where dry HCl or Sulphur Chlorides are used to dry it. But thermally drying it will often produce side produts like Oxychlorides etc. The reason for
this is quite easy to explain. I even uploaded that on the pictures thread some time ago. In CaCl2 x 6 H2O you have the calcium surrounded by a
trigonal prism of H2O where each square surface is capped by another H2O. So you end up with 9 water arround Calcium. This stacks along one axis and
therefore three H2O are shared and you end up with the composition of a hexahydrate (in case you ever wondered why Ca forms hexahydrates). Now the
Calcium is surrounded by water and the posive hydrogen on the other end hold the chloride. Therefore Ca and Chloride never meet, they don't even see
each other. In solution the Ca is automatically coordinated by water and once you crystallize it this structure I explained above forms.
If you remember Be and Al compounds they tend to have a short and strong M-O bond, so short that the H(+) is eaily given off, which is why they can be
turned to something like Beryllates or Aluminates quite easily. I guess something similar happens here. Once you apply more force the system will
react in a stronger Ca-O bond than kicking off 6-9 water ligands which gives you CaOCl systems....
There are methods to make anyhdrous Chlorides (I remember this was like 3 lectures in Advanced inorganic chemistry, how to make anhydrous chlorides.
This shows you that Chlorides are really special and they are not formed that easily in an anhydrous manner like you would expect it.
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JJay
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Calcium chloride is much easier to dry than, for example, aluminum chloride or zinc chloride. It's not as easy to dry as, for example, sodium
chloride, but it can be dried to nearly anhydrous condition with heat alone (note that the process outlined here is not practical in a home lab,
however): https://www.google.com/patents/US3339618
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Chemetix
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The patent gives quite a good overview of the problem; from a practical standpoint too. It was quite obvious from the patent that leaving it in a
beaker to dry was never going to work. The bottom layer dries and the top just takes up more moisture from the crystalline layer below it. Some
agitation is required to mix the progressively lower hydrated forms and increase the surface area.
Once the limit of dehydration is reached by heating it, the freezer is able to take that little bit more water. I don't assume it would be anhydrous,
but good enough for a simple desiccant. The microwave only works, as others have pointed out, up until it starts to spatter badly.
I was only bothering to dry some out because I was wondering how to reuse the hydrated salt in a process. How much water can it absorb after it has
been "dried"?
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JJay
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Don't bother putting it in the freezer unless you actually want hexahydrate crystals for some reason (I've done this; it's actually a bit tricky
because they dissolve very easily in very cold water, and if you undershoot the mark you will obtain only a solid amorphous mass of calcium chloride
in mixed hydration states). The limit of dehydration that can be reached by heating it is the anhydrous form, but it is going to take a very long time
to approach anhydrous in a regular oven.
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Chemetix
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Has anyone tried heating under reduced pressure?
Just gave the crystals from the freezer a microwave treatment.
2-5 second burst...no reaction no perception of heating in the crystals
8-10 seconds. Big puff of steam and fluffy mass, easily broken down with a metal utensil. Some hard mass lining the walls which flake off with some
effort.
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JJay
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That's a very interesting idea.
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