Making potassium chloride

[MulderMan]

i want to make some potassium chloride (lo-salt) purley to see if i can do it. would electrolosis with salt (sodium chloride) water and some carbon electrodes work? and with what power battery? ive only done electrolysis a couple of time before.

[budullewraagh]

NaCl, H2O and KNO3 could work i suppose. I say KNO3 only because I'm not too sure of other commercial sources of K

[MulderMan]

sorry im getting mixed up with chems. i wanted to make potassium chloride to extract potassium chlorate out of bleach. basically i want to have a go at making some matches. is there a easier way of getting potassium chlorate?

[MulderMan]

right ive put salt water on electrolosis with 2 carbon electrodes (off a D battery) and theres a heavy smell of chlorine. im doing what YT briefly mentioned in this thread http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3023&highlight=potassium+chlorate , have i done this right and to get my potassium chlorate what will i have to do, crystalise it?

[YT2095]

whoa whoa whoa! back up, there`s erronous info here!

 

1: NaCl and KNO3 will reamain just that, it does not react!, if you do it the other way around and use Sodium Nitrate and Potassium Chloride, THEN you`ll make KNO3 and NaCl

so that`s a non starter, sorry

 

 

2: Bleach as in the domestic toilet bleach is a Sodium based, it contains no potassium at all

 

 

what you CAN do however is make Sodium Chlorate with electrolysis of ordinary table salt (although it`s much easier to just buy it as `Gem` or `Doff` weedkiller)

and then use that in sollution and add your Lo-Salt soln to that while both are still hot.

you`ll see crystals form about 2 mm square and 1 molecule thick, and they look like CDs do in the sunshime with the rainbow effect as they fall out of soln, lett the mix cool, the crystals that are formed are your Potassium Chlorate

filter them off, disgard the liquid and then pour ice water over them to clean any sodium traces. then just let them dry and stick `em in an airtight jar untill you need them

[budullewraagh]

curses, the NO3- ion IS more electropositive than the Cl- ion.

good call, yt

[MulderMan]

so ive electrolised salt water and what have i made? what your saying is mix what i have made with lo-salt and let it crystalise? then i will have potassium chlorate? sorry for getting mixed up . also what are the correct way to strore potassium chlorte?

[YT2095]

1`stly is must have been a saturated soln of table (house) salt.

2`ndly you`ll need to do the electrolysis for a at least 48 hours (and probably change the anode about 3 times as it gets corroded)

 

then yes, make up a good strong mix of lo-salt (about equal volume of your Chlorate) and mix the 2 while hot, let it cool

 

store it in an airtight container pref Glass, DO NOT use plastic or cardboard or some metals (I`ll not list all the metals here).

a simple glass jam jar will be fine

you may store it the same place you would store any other salt, it`s quite safe until it mixed

I would reccomend you lable the jar as to it`s contents and that it is NOT TO be eaten

[MulderMan]

right well its bieng going for a good few hours and stop bubbleing but ill leave it like you said. 3 times lol, how many zinc carbon baterys am i gonna go through. are you saying i store it as a liquid or store it once it had crystalised?

[YT2095]

the Fizzing shouldn`t have stopped yet!?? have you checked your battery power, connections and electrodes?

 

store it as the dry powder

[MulderMan]

connections ar alright and was a brand new duracell 9v. should it be fizzing all through the 48 hour peroid?

[YT2095]

yup!, the only time it stops is if the soln gets dry, have you checked the battery power though? NaCl soln is nearly a dead short on your battery! it maybe perfectly flat

 

to give you an idea, I can make 500ml with a fully charged car battery

[felinlasv]

So how much KCLO3 can you make out of 500ml saturated NaCL? Isn't it way easier to buy KCLO3 instead of making it yourself? People I know have bought it before in its pure form, but I don't know how much they paid for it.

[MulderMan]

i just wanted a challenge, and something to do with electrolosis.