chilled_fluorine

What's up with you guys and pine tables? It seems like everyone is talking about burning them, pouring permanganic acid, piraña bath, sulphuric acid over them... Would anyone care to explain?Someone's signature here read something like: I'm going to paint the table, I'm going to paint it fine, I'm going to use h2so4, because the wood is pine.

Thank you phi, for the first bit of support I have been given in my short time here. John, "I thought I italicized that myself" was not my justification. The safety precautions I named are. Keep in mind that I was only using a puny 6 gram pile, not exactly the mother of all bombs. If I was truly as ignorant as you think I am, nothing you could say would influence my decisions, therefore you should have given up already. Are you beginning to doubt even yourself? John, if I call a beer a giddleboop, and you call it a beer, but the bartender gives us both beers, does it really matter what we call them if we just want a beer? I would say no. I admit it, I made a mistake. My chemistry teacher was wrong, and since I said what she did, that makes me equally wrong. No, I'm not trying to take the blame away from myself. I could have found out for sure. I just presumed a chem teacher was a valid source, and in this case I was wrong. Either way, I made calcium, which was the purpose of all this. I succeeded (got my metaphorical beer (no, I am not an alcoholic)), debate that.

This is sort of random, but do you think the Feds would let us try this with the statue of liberty? LOL

I thought there were several types of PEG, could you try to get a little more specific? Do you want to know where to buy it, or what proportion to mix it in with the silica (or both)? I never knew Sigma Aldrich had nanopowders of anything, I'll have to check that out. If you want to know about the proportions, I'm completely clueless, sorry... This stuff sounds pretty interesting, do you know how much pressure has to be exerted on it to cause hardening? If you just want to play with the stuff, you could use the classic cornstarch and water mix, hardens almost exactly the way you described. Check google for more info, like mixing ratios, can't remember them at this time.

Does anyone know where you can get those bulky 55 gallon oil drums? It would be nice to have a few right about now... **** imperial units, so inconvenient...

I don't think your link said how to make wood gas, but it sounds like you could be on to something. Once I had the gas, would I just use a standard hydrogen fuel cell? What about all the CO? Could the fuel cell finish burning that?

There was just a storm here, and I have access to hundreds, more likely thousands of kilos of wood. Is there any way I could use it to make electricity? No, I don't have a sterling engine. Anyways, should I sell it as firewood and use the money to buy petrol for my car, from which I will get electricity? Or could I make some epic carbon-air fuel cell, if such a thing is possible? Doesn't seem too likely that it is, but you have to assume an idea could potentially work, if not, we wouldn't have a chance of inventing anything new... The wood would probably need pyrolysis for purification if it was... Any ideas people?

John, I thought I italicized that myself, I did notice and consider that however. Doesn't set plaster have 9 h2o's? That's what my chem teacher taught me. November, Nonagon, Ununnonium, they all involve(d) 9 (obvious, I know). Sorry I took so long. Anyways, I filtered and boiled down the remaining non chlorinated precipitate, got a nice bright orange from it! I'd like it if some other people could try this, to give it a little more credibility from their potential confirmations. Agreed, it can be dangerous. Mmm... But John my friend, I think you failed to consider that for ignition, I stick a piece of mg in the pile, put a mix of al, s, & kno3 around it, then use a model rocket remote igniter to back up 20 meters before I light any thermite mixture, plus safety goggles that I modded with a uv filter from the eye doctors. Sounds really excessive, I know, but better excessive than molten metal splattered across your face, right? Back at science madness, we didn't point out things in quotes with italics. I'm a complete noob to these science forums conventions. John, there are nerdy GIRLS out here too.

Does italicising it make a difference? Is that some new convention that I didn't learn in chemistry? I felt like italicising it, so what?Please point out the errors, if any, in a way I can make sense of. Thank you.

If you can afford to waste a small portion of the dissolved solids, just allow most of the NaCl to precipitate out through heating/ natural evaporation. Then filter out the NaCl. Wash it in pure isopropyl alcohol to remove excess liquid. For faster "drying", light the pile on fire. Store for later use. Continue to heat / evaporate, and obtain an impure mix of salts, stop when the KCl starts to precipitate. Filter and throw away. Evaporate/ heat until the solution dries up, this should be KCl. Optionally repeat wash steps, there shouldnt be any significant NaCl contaminant. Store for later use. Remember, KCl should color flame purple, NaCl yellow. Oh, I almost forgot, KCl is more soluble than NaCl in hot water, but less in cold water. Sounds strange, but it's supposed to be true. I think the video would work for getting KCl, but the water would have to be cold, and the KCl would need to be washed in isopropyl.

People don't think they can get much organic waste, that is until they go down to a corn farm and ask for 500 kg's of corn stalks, at which time the owners gladly comply.

You article looks accurate enough, but I figure I'd tell you it really sets me of when people cite Wikipedia as a reference. Just don't do it again, and stop muddying up my post with Wikipedia crap.

I saw a sealed tube labeled polonium cyanide, 500 micrograms once at the science center... Sounds insanely poisonous. The polonium makes the CN ion sound so safe. Lol, never thought I would consider cyanide safe.

Well, it stopped raining a while ago so I attempted the experiment. Sorry I couldn't get back until now.Anyways, it went great! I ended up with a dull, oxidized chunk. I did the thermite reaction on a thick steel slab, which likely sucked heat from the reactants until they stopped prematurely. Over half of it burned though, so I took the resultant piece for primitive testing. It gave a metallic sound when tapped against the aforementioned steel slab. It bubbled at a respectable rate when placed in water, slowly turning the solution cloudy white. The solution reacted vigorously with ~38% HCl. The whole chunk reeked of H2S (maybe some leftover sulphides?) . When scratched, it exposed a shiny metal surface. Sounds like calcium! I used 2:1 sulphate to aluminium ratio for the thermite, standard magnesium ribbon ignition. I got photos, but I can't upload them! Ugh... So frustrating!

Seven years? I must seem like such a noob to you. You should check out science madness sometimes. I came to this forum because the people seem to have a little more common sense and technical background. I thought the people here were nicer too, that is until I met John. Why does he freak over azides so bad? Do you know why he acts so grumpy? John seems to be into all that physics stuff, I've never given much thought to it. Is profanity allowed on this forum? It was on SM. Not that I would go out of my way to use it. Sorry, my mobile browser can't follow your link. Syngas is H2 and CO mix. There's no O in CH4, so I'm assuming it comes from atmos. O2 right? Would you care to detail the conversion process further? I was told it could be done easily, but was not told how it was done. The whole thing intrigues me.

I'm looking for a simple way to make methane, it would be convenient to store it as a denser, liquid fuel. I was a little skeptical about the conversion to methanol, although one hydrocarbon to another doesn't sound too outlandish to me. I just picked biogas because I want fuel from my organic matter. If you have better ideas for a decently combustible liquid, I would much prefer them. Did I say anything about syngas? Why did you mention it? I wouldn't care if my methanol was impure, so long as it would burn hot enough, so I'll look for retort kiln biochar.

Considering as biogas is mostly methane, yes, I agree completely. It is very easy to get methane from methane. I want to make methane. Not buy it from big oil (maybe big natural gas...). Or make it from itself? Please tell me how to make it, and in a way I specified. Read Phi's comment about agr. subs. True. Phi, are you stalking me or something? It seems like you have responded to every one of my posts, however numbered they are... For that matter, I think I'm yet to find any post you haven't been on. You use this site a lot don't you?

Okay, I want to make biogas. I've got a ton of organic stuff (yard waste and dog crap) that would be fun to do something useful with. Does anybody out there have a cheap, simple way of making it for someone with no ability to fabricate custom parts? I don't think i have any way to compress the gas for storage, but I've heard you can easily convert it to methanol. I just want to make a practical apparatus for home production.

I'm not sure what the place is called, I'm just glad I get free stuff!

:chuckles: Thanks phi, it's the comments like that which make my day.Seriously though, they make you pay to take their garbage? I'll have to take my fill of stuff before they change their policies.

I just dehydrated the caso4 by heating with a small butane torch (or at least I hope I dehydrated it). The next step would be to mix with al and light it up... but nature had to ruin the fun and start it raining. I'll wait a while for it to stop. In the meantime, I might do a few purity checks on the dehydrated caso4, grind it up a little finer.This is completely random, but when I was heating some stainless steel mesh with the torch, I found that if you press the head of it against the mesh the flame will go through... If you try to pull it away again, the actuall flame will stay on the other side of the mesh. Try it. It looks pretty cool.Oh, sorry I can't get any pictures up for now, my camera is so stubborn. Did I make an error? It wouldn't surprise me too much. Would you mind pointing it out to me, I don't see it? I've never had an excuse to do anything with calcium sulphate before, so I really don't know too much about it. You may notice I said "pretty sure". Again, thanks for your input.

I read somewhere that you can make calcium metal by reacting powdered aluminium and calcium sulphate ( from plaster ) in a typical thermite reaction. It just so happens that I want some calcium metal right now, so I thought I'd try it. I crushed up some already set plaster (calcium sulphate nonahydrate I'm pretty sure) and now I plan on heating it until it drys to the dihydrate or anhydride. Which hydrate ( or the anhydride ) do you think would work best? I would guess the anhydride, the water is just one more thing to potentially ruin the batch. I'm really hoping this will work. Anyways, I'll get to it and keep you posted. No matter how trivial it is, I'd like to have your input on this.