raivo

Good point. Still i can not imagine deadly contaminant that may be occassionally attached to pure junk of potassium. What jdrug suggests is just the way medicines were made at old times.

I do not see any reason why body should not accept microelemnts from citrates. So nothing wrong with this part of your idea. There is another weak point though. Human body is very complex, there is surely more factors than just potassium deficiency that can make your muscles cramp. So your idea may not help but i do not belive it can hurt you.

No, copper in sulfuric acid will produce as much sulfate as it has oxide layer on it. I do not see reason why copper carbonate should not react with sulfuric acid. Another way is to electrolyse sulfuric acid solution with copper anode. Third way is to buy copper sulfate as fertiliser.

Feel free to ask if you run into problems! There are also dangers with hydrogen gas you have to be aware of. Lot of hydrogen in air is explosive mixture so you have to be sure it does not stay somewhere in rooms or in your aparatus.

You can not dissolve copper metall as easyli as zinc. Copper needs electric current or oxidising some way before it can react with sulfuric acid. When using pumps or chosing reaction vessel you have to be sure these will withstand sulfuric acid or other substances you may use.

Sulfur will not react with metal in such way. If you have supply of sulfuric acid you do not need any electrical current. Sulfuric acid will react with zinc very well. Easy way is to use 20 ... 30% sulfuric acid. In such concentrations its not remarkably dangerous. If you have to start with more than 50% sulfuric acid ( or oleum ) you have to dilute it. This is rather dangerous though. You have to pour acid into water ( never contrary !!! ) and even then you have to do this by small parts because there will be so much heat that liquid may start boiling or break your glassware. Whatever you decide, test your idea at first using small quantities and only if all goes well go to pounds or kilograms.

I think you need sulfuric acid to get zinc based fertiliser. As much as i know they use zinc sulfate in agriculture.

Your solution was colored because oxygen at positive electrode reacted with iron and made some iron oxide. This may be reacted with water and made hydroxide. Those are insoluble powders that settle very slowly onto bottom of flask. To make NaOH this way you need not only insoluble eletrodes (like platinum or graphite) but also ion exchange membrane (one or more) that separates anode and cathode departments. Then you get chlorine gas at positive electrode and NaOH solution in negative compartment.

Look in hardware store for propane burners. There are some for camping and some for soldering work. If you think a bit all these can be used in lab. Even more, some of cheap burners that screw on propane tank can attach resin tube if you remove some unneeded parts.

No, its not explosive just corrosive. I use it as solvent for certain extractions.

This is way to make concentrated acetic acid by distilling conc H2SO4 and sodium acetate.

Just thought to test new feature and add some useful synths here. Not especially cool but rather usefull. Thats what i like. [math] \ce{H2SO4 + KNO3 -> KHSO4 + HNO3} [/math] [math] \ce{H2SO4 + NaCl -> NaHSO4 + HCl} [/math] [math] \ce{H2SO4 + CH3COONa -> NaHSO4 + CH3COOH} [/math] [math] \ce{NH4NO3 + KCl -> KNO3 + NH4Cl} [/math] [math] \ce{(NH4)2SO4 + 2NaOH -> Na2SO4 + 2NH3 + 2H2O} [/math] [math] \ce{2KMnO4 + 16HCl -> 2KCl + 2MnCl2 + 5Cl2 + 8H2O} [/math]

If you can use analytical scales you may measure weight of remaining oxide instead of collecting CO2. Some of carbonates can be decomposed in test tube. You have to put bent tube (usally glass is used, but when collecting CO2 metallic tubes are as good) through stopper and collect gas to flask or graduated cylinder that is capsized on water tank.

Not true! Calcium carbonate decomposes at much lower temperatures. If you want to explore decomposition temperatures of carbonates you need very strong heating. I suppose that some alkali metal carbonates do not decompose even in bunsen burner flame.

Do you know how much aqua regia is needed to dissolve 1g of gold?

It gives ammonium sulfate as YT said and process is very exothermic. Glassware that contains small amount of conc H2SO4 may break if it is exposed to ammonia gas. I once tested this with success.

You lose a bit of mass in every chemical reaction where energy is released because energy has its mass. One joule has weight of aproximately 0.00000000001 mg. This is so small number that in chemistry you will never need to use it.

I do not see anything especially dangerous there. Amount of great chemistry demos is not very big . You have to think what in chemistry is most interesting for you and go to that direction with your own experiments and problems. For example you may want to explore extraction of dyes from plants or something with pyrotechnics or making your own elements, but i think you do not find too much ready-made demos any more.

It is acutally very easy. You need to apply some drops of 30% acetic acid to clean surface. If it bubbles it is mostly Mg, if not, its Al. You can also test by differences in specific gravity.

Main use of KCl is as fertiliser. Also it's sometimes used to replace part of NaCl in table salt. One of industrial uses is production of KOH and chlorine gas by electrolysis. KCl is also used as source of potassium when other potassium salts are made.

and CO2 will react immediately with NaOH to make Na2CO3 + H2O. Stainless steel and carbon are fairly stable in molten NaOH and KOH environment. So electrodes are not problem. Much harder is to find something that can be used to separate anode and cathode areas. Some separation makes things a lot more realistic but only suitable electrical isolator i know is asbestos. Later is dangerous for health and rather hard to find nowadays. Glass will dissolve immediately and teflon reacts violently with liquid Na.

I have no ph tables for boric acid at hand but i believe that if endpoint is reached (no free sulfuric acid left) then ph does not change any more (or changes very slowly) by adding borax. There should be sudden rise of ph just before endpoint. Specific gravity depending on concentration is as follows Na2B4O7 @ 15C % g/cm3 0.5 1.0042 1.0 1.0084 1.5 1.0131 2.0 1.0179 0.1g scale may be good enough if you can take 300ml (or more) of solution. No matter what way you use you may take certain excess of sulfuric acid so you can be sure all borax gets used. Sulfuric acid is so well soluble that your boric acid does not get contaminated and you may recrystallise it if you need still more purity.

To buy 500gx0.1 scales, search ebay for "pocket scale". There are lot of sellers and prices are great.

If temperature is lower than 58C then borax crystallises as decahydrate. So you may hydrate it by weting it. After that you have to dry it without rising temperature over 58C. In real world amount of water that hydrated salts have differs from theoretical. At least if you do not have nice crystalls. So i think best way is to use excess of sulfuric acid so you know all borax gets used or you may do some kind of titration to determine how much borax your powder actually contains. In that case you do not need to hydrate. You can also determine exact concentration by solubility or specific gravity of solution. I have some tables for this. If you decide to go that way i can share.

Ionization will occur at least with some organic solvents. Lithium batteries are proof for this. http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/1998/pdf/7010x1905.pdf has some info on electrolysis in lithium cells. There may still be other problems. I have no idea what secundary processes may take place especially if something goes wrong. If organic peroxides may form then this is rather dangerous thing. Can anyone estiamte this?