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Author: Subject: Wonders Of Sodium Carbonate or How to kill an orangutan
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[*] posted on 4-3-2017 at 15:13
Wonders Of Sodium Carbonate or How to kill an orangutan


Recently I bought a bag of sodium carbonate from the supermarket to try out as an additive for a custom job for a client. Turns out it does get a bit too basic for what they want. So I began to wonder what can you do with the stuff?

A dilute solution cleans glassware beautifully, my crystal tumblers really came out shiny with not much of the weak solution. Inspired, I gave it something more challenging, my milk frother for my morning coffee. OK it's just a 400ml blue lid Schott reagent bottle which I microwave my milk then give it a good shake. But the inside gets a proteiny fatty grime that take a bit to get off.
Carbonate solution worked ok until I gave it a bit more sodium carbonate powder, like a tip of a teaspoon, then it worked just fine.

So why have I been suckered into buying green coloured slightly thickened overpriced solutions that smell like green tea and coconut or lemon fresh smell? This stuff is cheap and probably has an energy footprint a thousand times less than this Frankensteinish concoction we call detergent. To say nothing of the burnt or displaced orangutans and the valuable rainforest that got bulldozed, to supply the palmoil that makes most of these cleaning products.

I thought one last test, maybe it just doesn't work on the tough stuff. So after a good fry in my cast iron wok which got thoroughly carbonised and greasy, in went a solution of say 100ml with 1/2 a teaspoon, gave it a swirl, let it sit for a little bit then ran a sponge over it and voila! Better than the green goop in terms of speed and volumes consumed.

We've been had!

What else can be rediscovered from our grandparents or great grandparents chemical cupboards that have been overlooked because of slick marketing campaigns?
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[*] posted on 4-3-2017 at 21:50


I will have to try this. I've been wondering about making soap from potassium carbonate for a while, but I never got around to it.
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[*] posted on 4-3-2017 at 21:56


I do know baking soda or borax work great on bottles for infants. If you need to mix up supplementary formula or are bottling mothers milk, they are gentle and deffinitely get rid of all sour smell with just a pinch of powder and warm water. That is one area you don't want to smell anything left behind by a detergent...



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[*] posted on 4-3-2017 at 23:01


Quote: Originally posted by violet sin  
I do know baking soda or borax work great on bottles for infants. If you need to mix up supplementary formula or are bottling mothers milk, they are gentle and deffinitely get rid of all sour smell with just a pinch of powder and warm water. That is one area you don't want to smell anything left behind by a detergent...


Be careful and make sure you wash out the borax really well. Borax is really really toxic by ingestion and many people have died from it.
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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 02:02


Quote: Originally posted by violet sin  
I do know baking soda or borax work great on bottles for infants. If you need to mix up supplementary formula or are bottling mothers milk, they are gentle and deffinitely get rid of all sour smell with just a pinch of powder and warm water. That is one area you don't want to smell anything left behind by a detergent...


Also be careful that you are not just deodourising a dirty container.
Washing soda is, unsurprisingly, quite good at cleaning things and it's cheap + fairly enviromnentally friendly.
It's not great on very greasy stuff; which is why detergents are used.
In the good old days, people used soap. It's OK unless you have hard water. If there's lots of Ca or Mg in the water you need to add something to prevent it reacting with the soap.
One compound that has been used for this is... sodium carbonate.
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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 03:44


Quote: Originally posted by Plutonium404  
Be careful and make sure you wash out the borax really well. Borax is really really toxic by ingestion and many people have died from it.

No it isn't, and I'm not aware of a single person that has died from acidental borax consumption. Sorry dude, but you deserve a public shaming for spreading false information. Alright, now get into the stocks...
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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 04:12


Borax
Acute toxicity
Ingestion:
Low acute oral toxicity; LD
50
in rats is 4,500 to 5,000
mg/kg of body weight.

The "many people who have died from it" must have really been committed
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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 04:42


Quote: Originally posted by NedsHead  
Borax
Acute toxicity
Ingestion:
Low acute oral toxicity; LD
50
in rats is 4,500 to 5,000
mg/kg of body weight.

The "many people who have died from it" must have really been committed


Quote: Originally posted by Melgar  
Quote: Originally posted by Plutonium404  
Be careful and make sure you wash out the borax really well. Borax is really really toxic by ingestion and many people have died from it.

No it isn't, and I'm not aware of a single person that has died from acidental borax consumption. Sorry dude, but you deserve a public shaming for spreading false information. Alright, now get into the stocks...


This was a pretty big case in China just two years ago. A family of five was making stuffed steam buns and accidently use borax instead of baking soda to make the dough rise. 3 of the 5 people died, 1 was in serious condition, and the other made it out OK after having their stomach pumped.

After this incident, the toxicity of borax and boric acid related compounds was retested, and it was found 1-3 grams causes severe toxic effects in adults, less than 15 grams can cause death, and the lethal dose for infants to be about 1.5 grams.

Here are the sources in case you still don't believe me (both are in Chinese, but a good browser translator should allow you to get the gist):
http://news.sohu.com/20150222/n409118861.shtml

http://qingdao.iqilu.com/jiankang/jkzx/2015/0225/2316213.shtml
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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 05:10


Quote: Originally posted by Plutonium404  
Quote: Originally posted by NedsHead  
Borax
Acute toxicity
Ingestion:
Low acute oral toxicity; LD
50
in rats is 4,500 to 5,000
mg/kg of body weight.

The "many people who have died from it" must have really been committed


Quote: Originally posted by Melgar  
Quote: Originally posted by Plutonium404  
Be careful and make sure you wash out the borax really well. Borax is really really toxic by ingestion and many people have died from it.

No it isn't, and I'm not aware of a single person that has died from acidental borax consumption. Sorry dude, but you deserve a public shaming for spreading false information. Alright, now get into the stocks...


This was a pretty big case in China just two years ago. A family of five was making stuffed steam buns and accidently use borax instead of baking soda to make the dough rise. 3 of the 5 people died, 1 was in serious condition, and the other made it out OK after having their stomach pumped.

After this incident, the toxicity of borax and boric acid related compounds was retested, and it was found 1-3 grams causes severe toxic effects in adults, less than 15 grams can cause death, and the lethal dose for infants to be about 1.5 grams.

Here are the sources in case you still don't believe me (both are in Chinese, but a good browser translator should allow you to get the gist):
http://news.sohu.com/20150222/n409118861.shtml

http://qingdao.iqilu.com/jiankang/jkzx/2015/0225/2316213.shtml

Ok, first of all, you're using the phrase "borax and boric acid related compounds". We're talking about borax and only borax, so none of this"related compounds" BS. Boric acid is something else entirely, and is often used to kill cockroaches in households, particularly because the way it kills them (by drying out their exoskeletons) is not harmful to people. However, because this is China we're talking about, that "boric acid" might have been replaced with cadmium cyanide or God knows what, because it was a nickel per ton cheaper than real boric acid. As far as real borax, this article explains it better than whatever weird ramblings are coming from the Chinese media:

https://crunchybetty.com/getting-to-the-bottom-of-borax-is-i...

Can you find a single corroborating article that wasn't written in China? I thought not. Now back to the pillories!
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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 05:17


Quote: Originally posted by Melgar  
Quote: Originally posted by Plutonium404  
Quote: Originally posted by NedsHead  
Borax
Acute toxicity
Ingestion:
Low acute oral toxicity; LD
50
in rats is 4,500 to 5,000
mg/kg of body weight.

The "many people who have died from it" must have really been committed


Quote: Originally posted by Melgar  
Quote: Originally posted by Plutonium404  
Be careful and make sure you wash out the borax really well. Borax is really really toxic by ingestion and many people have died from it.

No it isn't, and I'm not aware of a single person that has died from acidental borax consumption. Sorry dude, but you deserve a public shaming for spreading false information. Alright, now get into the stocks...


This was a pretty big case in China just two years ago. A family of five was making stuffed steam buns and accidently use borax instead of baking soda to make the dough rise. 3 of the 5 people died, 1 was in serious condition, and the other made it out OK after having their stomach pumped.

After this incident, the toxicity of borax and boric acid related compounds was retested, and it was found 1-3 grams causes severe toxic effects in adults, less than 15 grams can cause death, and the lethal dose for infants to be about 1.5 grams.

Here are the sources in case you still don't believe me (both are in Chinese, but a good browser translator should allow you to get the gist):
http://news.sohu.com/20150222/n409118861.shtml

http://qingdao.iqilu.com/jiankang/jkzx/2015/0225/2316213.shtml

Ok, first of all, you're using the phrase "borax and boric acid related compounds". We're talking about borax and only borax, so none of this"related compounds" BS. Boric acid is something else entirely, and is often used to kill cockroaches in households, particularly because the way it kills them (by drying out their exoskeletons) is not harmful to people. However, because this is China we're talking about, that "boric acid" might have been replaced with cadmium cyanide or God knows what, because it was a nickel per ton cheaper than real boric acid. As far as real borax, this article explains it better than whatever weird ramblings are coming from the Chinese media:

https://crunchybetty.com/getting-to-the-bottom-of-borax-is-i...

Can you find a single corroborating article that wasn't written in China? I thought not. Now back to the pillories!


It's ironic that you are criticizing my sources when the source you provide is titled "Crunchybetty" and uses statements such as "Borax is wholly natural." Cinnabar is totally natural too, so should I go eat some now? Potassium chromate is also found in nature as the mineral tarapacaite, so that means it's perfectly safe right?
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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 05:42


Plutonium404 my whole post just got deleted so I'll make it short this time.

Neither of your sources support your statement the 15g can cause death.
I'll make some assumptions to see if the story given seems accurate:
<15g can cause death, so I'll assume that the three people that died ingested 10g each.
The two other people had signs of toxicity, so we'll say they each had one gram.
That's 32g total of borax in the bread of the steamed buns they ate.
I can't find the density of powdered borax, but it must be something less than the solid, which is 1.73g/cc. That means they added more than 18.5cc (probably way more, the density of powdered borax I bet is around 1g/cc) of what they thought was baking soda to the recipe. That's a huge amount! I have a recipe for 60 cookies which uses 1 teaspoon, 4.9ml or so, about 4.5g. I can't find a recipe for steamed buns that uses baking soda, but it would not take that much.

Bottom line, unless there is a good souce to support your claims, especially if they go against common knowledge, no one will believe them.

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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 05:55


Quote: Originally posted by Melgar  

Ok, first of all, you're using the phrase "borax and boric acid related compounds". We're talking about borax and only borax, so none of this"related compounds" BS. Boric acid is something else entirely, and is often used to kill cockroaches in households, particularly because the way it kills them (by drying out their exoskeletons) is not harmful to people.



The way to make boric acid is to treat borax with an acid such as hydrochloric acid.
If you ingest borax that's exactly what happens- you mix the borax with the acid in your stomach.

So, do you now see that you are talking total bullshit there?

You are also wrong about the mechanism by which borates (whether initially supplied as boric acid or a salt, like borax).
The classic recipes for killing ants etc involve mixing the borate with sugar. That's so the bugs eat it.
Unless you think they decide that the clever thing to do with their food it is to rub it all over themselves, your idea that it dries them out is nonsense.
It's also not plausible- why would boric acid dry them out more than, say, a warm day?
The exoskeleton of insects is pretty nearly dry chitin to begin with.

Borates- in solution in water- are toxic to invertebrates, so it's not "drying them out"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01055917?LI=tr...


Meanwhile, back in the real world, borax is quite toxic.


[Edited on 5-3-17 by unionised]
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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 06:22


Some studies on borate toxicity to humans:

1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10050929

Quote:
The critical effects in several species are male reproductive toxicity and developmental toxicity. The doses that cause these effects are far higher than any levels to which the human population could be exposed. Humans would need to consume daily some 3.3 g of boric acid (or 5.0 g borax) to ingest the same dose level as the lowest animal NOAEL. No effects on fertility were seen in a population of workers exposed to borates or to a population exposed to high environmental borate levels. There is remarkable similarity in the toxicological effects of boric acid and borax across different species. Other inorganic borates that simply dissociate to boric acid are expected to display similar toxicity, whereas those that do not dissociate simply to boric acid may display a different toxicological profile.


2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21424392
Quote:
dose levels of boron associated with developmental and reproductive toxic effects in animals are by far not reachable for humans under conditions of normal handling and use


3) The EPA's toxicology report:
Quote:
In summary, reviews of Poison Control Center data support a finding that routine, inadvertent exposures among infants and small children to boric acid seldom pose a significant risk. However, ingestions of substantial amounts pose serious risks. Among adults,there have been incidents with significant toxicity from breathing dusts that were airborne. These incidents are usually due to over-application by inexperienced applicators.



[Edited on 3-5-2017 by Metacelsus]

Attachment: EPA-HQ-OPP-2005-0062-0004.pdf (516kB)
This file has been downloaded 888 times





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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 08:02


Sooo, my niece and my son are 100% fine just for the record, now 4 and 3 respectively. Both intelligent and quite physically capable. If anything ahead of their piers.

The stuff was throw in, in pinch by hand quantities to hot tap water and set off to the side for a few. The containers were then rinsed several times with just water after all the greasy feeling and smell were gone.

Simple, effective, safe. And no SLS, artificial smells, sudds making residue. Also if you used regular detergent you could taste and smell it from the soft plastic. The children rejected those.

Though i can't speak for larger quantities, there is zero harm in using it as such.




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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 10:50


My favorite grandparents chemical has got to be citric acid. It chelates certain metal ions and I've successfully applied it to clean coffee machines, tea pots, cups, ect. and derust some corroded iron parts.
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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 11:12


My dad used to give us bottles of anhydrous biotech ethanol to wash our faces with on camping trips. That stuff burns; the idea of drinking it never even crossed my mind.





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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 15:32


Caution with Na2CO3, a boiling aqueous solution of Washing Soda behaves like NaOH, and readily attacks Aluminum utensils causing pitting!

I have verified this with Al foil and boiling Na2CO3 heated in a microwave.

The action of water on Na2CO3, I could express by the reversible reactions:

Na2CO3 + H2O = NaOH + NaHCO3

NaHCO3 + H2O = NaOH + H2O + CO2

and with heating, the escape of CO2 moves the reaction to the right. This is confirmed by a reference to quote:

"In aqueous solution, carbon dioxide production begins at room temperature and decomposition of NaHCO3(aq) is essentially complete if the solution is brought to boiling."

Link: http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/inorganic/faq/c...

Contributing would be the introduction of Al, which reacts/removes NaOH, also moving the reaction to the right.

Interestingly, in a cold solution, there is no evidence of any reaction.

[Edited on 6-3-2017 by AJKOER]
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[*] posted on 5-3-2017 at 18:08


Quote: Originally posted by unionised  
The way to make boric acid is to treat borax with an acid such as hydrochloric acid.
If you ingest borax that's exactly what happens- you mix the borax with the acid in your stomach.

So, do you now see that you are talking total bullshit there?

His statement was so incredibly wrong that I didn't know where to start, in proving it wrong. Chemicals can be inhaled and absorbed through the skin as well as swallowed. Inhalation exposure is usually the worst for you, health-wise, in which case, the two chemicals ARE very different. So do you see why you're completely full of shit yourself? If I can prove a chemical is harmless when inhaled, not only does that prove it has no or low toxicity when swallowed, but it provents a pivot to "well, I meant it was toxic when inhaled." Really, my goal was to point out the pivot from "borax" to "borax and boric-acid-related chemicals".

Quote:
You are also wrong about the mechanism by which borates (whether initially supplied as boric acid or a salt, like borax).
The classic recipes for killing ants etc involve mixing the borate with sugar. That's so the bugs eat it.
Unless you think they decide that the clever thing to do with their food it is to rub it all over themselves, your idea that it dries them out is nonsense.
It's also not plausible- why would boric acid dry them out more than, say, a warm day?
The exoskeleton of insects is pretty nearly dry chitin to begin with.

Borates- in solution in water- are toxic to invertebrates, so it's not "drying them out"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01055917?LI=tr...


Meanwhile, back in the real world, borax is quite toxic.


[Edited on 5-3-17 by unionised]

Haha, wow, you just have no clue how wrong you are, do you? See, insects groom themselves with saliva from their mouths, and they have this waxy stuff all over their shells that prevents water loss. Turns out, boric acid in that saliva makes the waxy stuff stop doing its job, and the insect dies of dehydration. The boric acid doesn't have to be in the saliva, but it helps. Boric acid also has other toxic effects, but the thing with the waxy layer is the main one, since they don't have to eat it for it to kill them:

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/assets/media/documents/infos...

I like how you think that any silly thought that enters your head is "the real world." Well, in the REAL real world, borax and boric acid are both about as toxic to humans as good ol' sodium chloride, and boron is a necessary trace mineral. Some people come to the ER on occasion, freaking out after either they or their kid swallowed some boric-acid-based cockroach killer. They often have symptoms, which are almost certainly due to the placebo effect, since a study comparing reported effects of exposure to different pesticides showed that boric acid had the fewest. Or borax. Either way, you've been convicted of attempting to spread false information, so to the pillories with you!

If you were merely confused about the meaning of "acute toxicity", you may attempt an appeal based on ignorance.
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[*] posted on 6-3-2017 at 00:32


Ooorh c'mon!
Everyone knows borax is deadly when inhaled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgQ1yJqwY_4
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[*] posted on 6-3-2017 at 01:37


Quote: Originally posted by Chemetix  
Ooorh c'mon!
Everyone knows borax is deadly when inhaled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgQ1yJqwY_4

That's not the regular Muppets I am used to!
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[*] posted on 6-3-2017 at 04:44


Quote: Originally posted by Plutonium404  
It's ironic that you are criticizing my sources when the source you provide is titled "Crunchybetty" and uses statements such as "Borax is wholly natural." Cinnabar is totally natural too, so should I go eat some now? Potassium chromate is also found in nature as the mineral tarapacaite, so that means it's perfectly safe right?

I used that source because it cited its sources as was written with a style that was easy to understand. And who gives a crap if the article says it's wholly natural? It never says that you should eat everything that's wholly natural, and the only implication seems to be that if that's something that people care about, then borax is in that category.

As far as your Chinese sources go: In China, people have a tendency to not trust what the government says, because the government has lied to them before in the interests of not starting a panic. Two kinds of rumors get started in China: total bullshit rumors, and true rumors that typically implicate the government. The government only cares about quashing one of those types of rumors though, so the other type has a tendency to spread rather quickly, using China's limited non-governmental media. Allowing bullshit rumors to spread via nongovernmental media also gives governmental media more credibility by comparison, so the government isn't as thorough about eliminating those stories. How much do you want to bet which type of media those two websites contain? Because my money's on nongovernmental.
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[*] posted on 6-3-2017 at 05:32


I can verify that a small quantity of boric acid sprinkled on the routes that insects take will stop a silverfish infestation within a week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverfish
I used about 1g TOTAL, leaving 249g for experiments :)

I rubbed a little between my fingers
... nothing to report other than the spiky nature of the crystals.

P.S. if you want to save the orangutan use palm oil from sustainable sources,
when I was in Malaysia a lot of old rubber plantations were converted to oil palm,
hence no new destruction, but at slightly higher cost,
that Western consumers were not willing to pay.
Result (combined with greed & corruption) = lots more virgin forrest lost :(:mad:

Don't blame the ivory poachers ... stop buying ivory ... etc.

[Edited on 6-3-2017 by Sulaiman]




CAUTION : Hobby Chemist, not Professional or even Amateur
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[*] posted on 6-3-2017 at 05:33


Sodium Drift 2017 - and the drift goes on....
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[*] posted on 7-3-2017 at 02:45


I've noticed a LOT of uses for Na2CO3, one as the base of my laundry soap and the rest being coconut oil based soap (lye soap) and or fels-naptha - both shaved to very fine flakes so it dissolves quickly in water. The mix of these two has worked better than any detergent I have used in the last 10 years and it is about 1/10 to 1/15 the price!

I did try making soap with Na2CO3 instead of NaOH using the correct stoichmetric amounts and maybe about 3-4% more carbonate to make sure it was enough. It seemed to never go through the saponification process and solidify or heat much though it did heat slightly. I did use anhydrous carbonate for this as well, IDK if that may be an issue but figured that would be fine.

One good thing if you need Na2CO3 is that you can always make it with baking soda by heating (some say to 250, but I found this often leaves a lot unconverted so I go to about 500). If you need pure sodium carbonate for that is at least food grade (most baking soda is USP so it is even more pure than food grade) then converting from NaHCO3 is probably the best bet.

I just did a conversion on the stove top using a high quality SS skillet that had been scrubbed clean to perfection before the process. Towards the end of the process I stated noticing some yellowish "residue" being scrapped up off the bottom - it looked like dried yellow snow but there was a very minimal amount. I scraped the carbonate away so there was a VERY thin layer left and could see that there was a very thin coating of a yellow substance which I'm not sure what it is - just Na2CO3 or if is some corrosion of the stainless steel. I took some pics to show what I saw.

I'm concerned if the pan is contaminating the carbonate and maybe the heat and basic/caustic nature of the carbonate may be corroding the pan. IDK if this is a possibility or if it is from high heat causing it to yellow. I do seem to recall that once when heating Na2CO3 to a very high temp it did go off-white to a slight yellow tint - BUT when I heated bicarb in a glass test tube with a blowtorch to VERY high temp (probably 1000-1200F) I didn't notice the yellow at all.


NaHCO3 to Na2CO3 - yellow residue small - 1.jpg - 34kB NaHCO3 to Na2CO3 - yellow residue small - 2.jpg - 40kB NaHCO3 to Na2CO3 - yellow residue small - 3.jpg - 54kB
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[*] posted on 7-3-2017 at 05:07


I've found that heating a bicarbonate solution to near water's boiling point will evolve CO2 quite readily, and if you need an aqueous solution anyway, this is more convenient than heating the dry powder.
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