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mangoman667
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Hmm... what do you guys think about making sodium hydroxide from baking soda? Very, very cheap input, and all it takes is heating to 851C according to
Wikipedia to move through both decomposition stages into sodium oxide. Then you would mix with water to form pure sodium hydroxide. Any limitations
I'm not aware of (efficiency, feasibility, explosive reactivity)? I can buy pounds of the stuff for cents in any grocery store.
As far as potassium nitrate goes, I found something called Spectracide Stump Remover Granules for $6 per one pound bottle. The company staff that
answers questions on the website claims its 100% potassium nitrate. Think it's legit?
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Amos
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Yeah, it's pretty pure potassium nitrate. It's just not as cheap as instant cold packs, which are full of ammonium nitrate. I prefer ammonium nitrate
anyway, as you can use it and baking soda to make ammonia and sodium nitrate. Ammonia is extremely useful and I can use the sodium nitrate to make
nitric acid.
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Texium
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I have the stump remover that you're talking about, and soon after buying it, I noticed that there are a few brown and gray specs in it. These can be
easily removed with a recrystallization or two though, and then you'll be left with a beautiful, clean, crystalline product.
Unrefined, the stump remover still works fine for uses that don't require much purity, such as making black powder.
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mangoman667
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Any word on the efficiency of the sodium oxide route? I'm just wondering if it would be feasible realistically. Also, glad to hear that the stump
remover is almost pure, I will go ahead and order a bottle. $6 per pound is hard to beat here in Chicago 
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Brain&Force
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Man, I was smart to buy that one bottle of KNO3 in Texas! It's come in handy for my grill-entertainment purposes.
What do you want to use sodium oxide for?
At the end of the day, simulating atoms doesn't beat working with the real things...
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mangoman667
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Earlier in the thread I mentioned producing sodium oxide by heating the bejesus out of baking soda to go through its two decomp reactions and using
the sodium oxide produced to make cheap sodium hydroxide by mixing with water.
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Texium
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Quote: Originally posted by mangoman667  | | Earlier in the thread I mentioned producing sodium oxide by heating the bejesus out of baking soda to go through its two decomp reactions and using
the sodium oxide produced to make cheap sodium hydroxide by mixing with water. |
I hear ya man, I'm just not
sure what to say about it. I'm sure that's the case with others too. Just wait a day or two and somebody will probably give you some input. If not,
then maybe some original experimentation would be in order.
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mangoman667
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Hmm I probably should have quoted the previous poster... still getting used to this forum's system haha . That comment was meant to answer the poster before me.
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Texium
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| Quote: Originally posted by mangoman667 | | Hmm I probably should have quoted the previous poster... still getting used to this forum's system haha . That comment was meant to answer the poster before me. |
I see that now. I
actually hadn't noticed B&F's question, sorry.
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mangoman667
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Any particularly good use for magnesium sulfate? I noticed the walgreens brand is virtually pure and has been sitting here unused for the latter part
of four years. Think I could use it to make other sulfur compounds? Or maybe even sulfuric acid? What use, if any, do YOU usually have? I'm curious to
know.
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hyfalcon
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Dry it in an oven and it can be used as a descant.
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Oxirane
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Magnesium sulfate is sold as x-hydrate. I bought few kg's from local fish store and dried it in oven. It came out half the mass I put it in as.
Sodium carbonate will decompose to sodium oxide at 851C. I've decomposed a kg of calcium carbonate to calcium oxide with electric oven and it works
well. But you will probably not reach the temperature using any common gas heater, you will need forced air burner and an insulated container.
Easier trick may be to get calcium hydroxide which is very cheap in large bags, and mix it with sodium carbonate to get sodium hydroxide and calcium
carbonate. Separating them pure needs some tricks though because strong alkalis will eat all filters.
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Amos
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Magnesium sulfate is probably the cheapest desiccant around, the cheapest and easiest to find magnesium salt if you need one, and can easily be used
to make sodium sulfate, which is useful for separating metals when one of them has an insoluble sulfate. Very useful, all-around. Epsom's Salt is the
heptahydrate, easily found at most department stores in the pharmacy section, often in little green cartons.
Now, with regards to producing sodium hydroxide by slaking sodium oxide produced from sodium bicarbonate: The temperature at which this occurs is
impressively high. If you think it is feasible to obtain such a temperature for a lengthy period of time (probably several hours at the least to
ensure full conversion), by all means try it, but the work and energy required, as well as the drop in purity(you will almost surely have sodium
carbonate left, and maybe some impurities introduced during the decomposition process), I wouldn't say it's worth it. You could always try
electrolysis of sodium chloride, but that comes with its own set of issues. Probably best just to buy it.
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mangoman667
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I tried going the electrolysis route a while ago, I used carbon electrodes from number 2 pencil cores and ended up with nothing but a dilute sodium
hypochlorite solution because the chlorine gas produced reacted back with the hydroxide. I guess slaking won't work for purity reasons unless you can
heat in a crucible from the bottom.
Thanks for mentioning the desiccant properties of magnesium sulfate, I had forgotten about that. I'm probably going to need desiccant in the near
future and this will do perfectly 
Any preferred liquids for crystal washes after precipitation? I'm using nearly pure isopropanol right now but it fails to wash out powders that are
intermixed with the fine crystals. It beads up like an oil and envelops both the powder contaminant and the crystal almost like an emulsion.  Kinda frustrating
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careysub
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Look at Ace Hardware or small/independent hardware stores or local chains. I find sodium hydroxide at Ace and Smart&Final (in California) for
$4/lb. Online soap making retailers carry it low prices as well, $4/lb at soapgoods.com. Duda Diesel has it for $3/lb.
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Amos
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| Quote: Originally posted by mangoman667 |
Any preferred liquids for crystal washes after precipitation? I'm using nearly pure isopropanol right now but it fails to wash out powders that are
intermixed with the fine crystals. It beads up like an oil and envelops both the powder contaminant and the crystal almost like an emulsion. Kinda frustrating |
Yeah, I hate isopropanol for washing purposes. Recrystallization is your best method for purification, including filtering the solution once all of
your desired product has dissolved. For washing afterward, I would suggest acetone, as it tends not to dissolve very many ionic salts and it's really
easy to recover via distillation. Find it next to paint thinners at hardware stores or in Walfart.
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tomholm
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| Quote: Originally posted by mangoman667 | | My question is: which stores are good for getting basic chemicals, and which chemicals can I easily manufacture using household or store bought
chemicals? |
My store, http://www.elementalscientific.net offers a large stock of chemicals, both easy and hard to find. Check us out.
Also, Sciencemadness members get 10% off on their orders. Just enter "sciencemadness" during checkout.
Tom
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tomholm
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| Quote: Originally posted by mangoman667 | | My question is: which stores are good for getting basic chemicals, and which chemicals can I easily manufacture using household or store bought
chemicals? |
My store, http://www.elementalscientific.net offers a large stock of chemicals, both easy and hard to find. Check us out.
Also, Sciencemadness members get 10% off on their orders. Just enter "sciencemadness" during checkout.
Tom
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mangoman667
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Tom, thanks for letting me know about your store! I checked it out in depth, and you have an amazing stock. I just have a couple of questions: do you have any liebig condensers with ground glass joints? Also, do your adapters
feature ground glass joints as well? Thank you for being a provider for all of the amateur chemists out there, and I will definitely consider buying
the rest of my stock from you.
[Edited on 10-16-2014 by mangoman667]
[Edited on 10-16-2014 by mangoman667]
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careysub
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| Quote: Originally posted by mangoman667 | | ...I just have a couple of questions: do you have any liebig condensers with ground glass joints? Also, do your adapters feature ground glass joints
as well?... |
Just use the site search engine. It is quite a simple search engine, but very effective. I does a simple partial string match against product titles
and returns everything that matches. Everything in logically named, so it is ease to pull up all candidate products.
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mangoman667
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| Quote: Originally posted by No Tears Only Dreams Now | | Quote: Originally posted by mangoman667 | Failing to find potassium nitrate, I bought some of what I thought was almost pure sodium hydroxide in the form of Zep Crystal Heat Drain Opener.
Turns out it's just like the other ones--instead of being a white crystal, its a blue powder with small white beads mixed in...  it says it contains sodium hydroxide, any ideas on how to purify?
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The large white beads are pure sodium nitrate; I was able to separate that out with a sieve, which I would suggest, but the actual sodium hydroxide is
toast. |
Bringing back an answer from a while ago, I dissolved those white beads in hot water, but after 3 or 4 additions, I began to notice what looks like a
blue precipitate clouding up my solution. Is this normal, or is it just because of various impurities?
And on another topic, is there any immediate use for sodium carbonate? I made some a while ago for another experiment, but now I have a beakerful
lying around that I don't know what to do with.
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Amos
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If you've got blue stuff turning up, I would guess that's residual dye from the drain cleaner that you picked up, unless you sieved it wrong. I got
beautiful crystals similar to these: https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8090/8412640755_d13dd9ee3b_z.j...
And they worked really well as an oxidizer.
You can save the sodium carbonate if you want. Making carbonates is something done very often in inorganic chemistry, as both a purification step to
separate alkali metals from others, or as a route to oxides or other salts. Carbonates are great.
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NOV:5
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I'm kinda confused about the iodine thing. I bought it on EBay no problem. I also picked up the "Roebic" drain cleaner because it said 100%, it looked
pretty good
Remember, Remember...
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mangoman667
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I filtered the solution and the filter picked up a blue precipitate. I'm guessing it was some kind of very fine powder of a salt that coated itself on
the beads. Anyways, the solution filtered, and was relatively clear. I evaporated it over a flame just now and I got a nice, clean, white powder. How should I go about crystallizing? Should I just drop in water slowly until
everything is dissolved and then let it air-evaporate?
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Amos
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| Quote: Originally posted by mangoman667 | | I filtered the solution and the filter picked up a blue precipitate. I'm guessing it was some kind of very fine powder of a salt that coated itself on
the beads. Anyways, the solution filtered, and was relatively clear. I evaporated it over a flame just now and I got a nice, clean, white powder. How should I go about crystallizing? Should I just drop in water slowly until
everything is dissolved and then let it air-evaporate? |
Depends how much you have. The shape of crystals I had resulted from me dissolving about 50-60 grams in boiling hot water(I don't remember how much on
a hot plate, then turning off the hot plate with the beaker still on it, adding a bit of dilute nitric acid after boiling ceased to remove bases, and
letting it sit until the morning, slowly cooling down.
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