jowrose

yeah, I don't think I'll be trying it anytime soon... just using the acid will be fine. My parents probably wouldn't appreciate the explosions in hte basement. Just as they had little appreciation for the 250 grams of sugar-potassium nitrate mixture that ignited prematurely...

hmmm so I would be left with an iron hydroxide solid? Is there a way to dissolve off the water of the Iron (III) Chloride solution and be left with an Iron (III) Chloride solid?

wow. I hope someday I am as knowledgeable as both of you... jeez

while we are dumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere that a prolonged ice age is unlikely, a cataclysmic event (like the volcanoes that started - and prolonged - the mini ice-age) could spark a major climate change and possible lead to a rapid decrease in atmospheric temperature with possibly devastating environmental repercussions. And as H W Copeland said, would some thinning of the herds be so bad? I was listening to a comedian (Lewis Black maybe) and he was contemplating that all these natural disasters (Katrina, the tsunami, the earthquake in Pakistan) are simply earth's immune system starting up in order to remove us - its disease.

I think I'll just purchase some drain-cleaner... Easier, plus you get better concentration.

Ouch. I was melting pennies with thermite once, and the zinc inside some of the new pennies melted really quick (actually i think it might have boiled) and the penny blew up and spewed molten metal everywhere. that was pretty scary. Yeah, just look for the biggest and gaudiest warning labels and you're probably getting some fun stuff...

It couldn't have been that hot, I was only using an alcohol burner and a crucible. I do have a blowtorch, but I only use that for the funner (and more dangerous) stuff (heating salt to make sodium). And yes i know funner is not a word. How would there be any HCl left? If HCl is a gas, is it just loosely trapped in the solid compound I was heating? That picture of Cl2 you posted the link to looks a lot like what was forming at the bottom of the crucible (not the brown smoke). It seemed a little darker (more greenish yellow) though.

do as you outta, add acid to watta Yeah, lye is dangerous stuff. I read that it is used by some to create pure sodium, rather than heating up sodium chloride and running a current through it (which is a pain, i've tried). Supposedly you only need to get lye up to 600 degrees before you can start to separate it, but at that point it will eat through just about anything. So i didn't feel like trying... Drain cleaners are up to 97 % H2SO4? wow, I didn't know that. I'll have to pick some up.

Do you just kinda start hacking away at a battery? Or is there a specific method? I would go out and buy chemicals but I highly doubt anyone would sell it to me... I was lucky to get muriatic acid methinks.

Ah i didn't think of that. Thanks

ok, that makes sense. completely off topic, how is Fe3O4 a compound? is the extra oxygen loosely attached, which is what makes it so magnetic? So i took that compound from the Iron - HCl reaction that I boiled off of the solution and put that in a crucible and heated it up. A few minutes later, it started reacting and for a good 45 seconds it was emitting thick brown smoke, with a small amount of yellow vapor at the bottom of the crucible being released as well. Was this the chlorine leaving the iron? Did I really have Iron (III) Chloride that I boiled down? Or was I oxidizing something?

I know the electrolysis creates relatively pure Iron Oxide (for thermite...) when you attach it to the positive wire, but what if you attach the nail to the negative? Do you get Iron Hydroxide? And if the hydroxide is lost when the substance is heated, ending with Iron oxide, it seems that that method is far more efficient at creating iron oxide than simply attaching the nail to the positive end (as is commonly done). So if the hydroxide is lost with heating, then when I stick an iron nail in HCl and receive iron chloride and heat that substance, what will the product be? jeebus i'm confuzzled

ok. Thanks. I think I'll end up getting some of that accordian-like plastic stuff and maybe coat it with something to keep off erosion.

I by no means have anything near advanced equipment. I don't even have a bunsen burner, just an alcohol lamp thing and a hot plate. It's all fine for what I do though so I'm not complaining. Sulphuric acid is commonly found in car batteries, correct? I think I read that somewhere. Probably the anarchist cookbook, but I don't trust that thing at all. Follow that thing and you're liable to blow off your hand. thanks for the replies, very helpful stuff you guys have been posting

So the chlorine is lost when I heat up the Iron (III) chloride? hmmm. If I end up with iron hydroxide, is that not the same thing as "rust acid"? I believe that is the product of putting an iron nail on the negative electrode of an electrolysis reaction.

ahhhh ok. Thanks. So that's probably not something I could do in my basement...

I made a wooden box with a door and a rack for test tubes, and I think I will simply modify it to have a fan or two at the top connected to a set of pipes that will eventually lead to one of the output vents of my house. I might need several fans along the way to keep the stuff moving though. What should I use for the pipes? probably not steel, I'm assuming. Would PVC be eroded by acid vapor or other somewhat volatile substances?

I've tried to create 100% hydrochloric acid a few times, but I don't seem to have succeeded. I boiled muriatic acid (~30% HCl) and put it through a home-made condenser, but the liquid I ended up with wasn't pure acid (at least I don't think so). I read somewhere that HCl is a gas at room temperature, so it must be dissolved in the water. Does this make creating pure acid impossible (without using extensive amounts of pressure)?

So when I boil down dissolved Iron (III) Chloride I'm not going to end up with a pure solid? How would it also contain hydroxide? forgive me, I'm a high school chemistry student with a miserable lack of knowledge...

Wouldn't fumes start reacting with the metal parts involved in a fume hood? Or can you purchase "acid-resistant" fume hoods?

Does anyone know what solid Iron (III) Chloride looks like? I boiled some solution down, and it turned out a sort of light purple/brown powder. Is this true Iron (III) Chloride?

Wow, thanks for all the fast replies. Yeah, I was incorrect about the baume. The bottle was kind of old, and I mistook a degree symbol for a percent symbol. Thanks for the correction. Xeluc, I know what you mean with the vapors corroding everthing around. I had a flint sparker for a butane torch and now it's completely useless; the acid vapor started forming some crud (iron chloride i'm assuming) around the whole thing. I guess I really should create some sort of fume hood. That will be somewhat complicated though, as my basement "lab" is not too well situated... Thanks for the replies and suggestions. -john

Thanks. I'm glad i'm not screwing anything up... By the way, I read somewhere that iron chloride can be used to etch metal. How would this be done? It would only work with more reactive metals, right? Aluminum, Zinc, etc?

I recently made some Iron (III) Chloride by placing an iron nail in a solution of hydrochloric acid. The resulting solution was yellow, which is odd because I read somewhere that the iron chloride solutions were usually brown. So I decided to boil the solution in hopes of obtaining iron chloride as a solid. This solid came out a much darker brown. Did I do something wrong? Did another reaction occur as I heated the solution? Or do I really have a solid sample of FeCl3?

I recently acquired a whole lot of chemistry equipment (dozens of test tubes, beakers, flasks, etc...) and have since been messing around a little in my basement. I've become interested in acidic reactions, specifically the reactions between HCl (which I get from muriatic acid) and various metals (zinc, aluminum, iron, lead, etc). Theoretically, the products of these reactions should only be hydrogen gas and a metal chloride, but there is always a very strong odor emanating from both the acid, the reaction, and oftentimes the products. So my question is this: are there any safety hazards in these reactions, perhaps involving dangerous gases? Muriatic acid is about 31 percent HCl, plus some water and "baume" (whatever that is). I do have a gas mask, but would that even help?