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Making Hydrochloric acid + Halogen Chemistry.


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a T spoon of Bicarb dissolved in warm to hot water and drink that. kills the acid quite nicely, then get to the nearest toilet ASAP while holding in the inevitable burp and get rid of the lot!

 

then do the cup of tea with 4 sugars trick :)

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It's all because of physics. The muriatic acid (HCl) will eat through the aluminum foil's oxide layer and eventually eat through the aluminum forming hydrogen gas. The pressure of the H2 gas will cause a physical failure in the bottle which results in the explosion. Of course you'd have to be the biggest ****ing idiot on the face of the earth to even try it.

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Actually its pretty darn safe if u do it right. The H2 doesnt start to come out for a few minutes. So if you stay far away you have plenty time to be safe.

 

Yeah, tell that to the person who just happens to be walking by and notices the bottle, walks by it, then gets covered in concentrated HCl and shards of flying glass.

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While were on the subject' date=' why is it so hard to find Sulfuric acid? Is it not the most produced chemical worldwide? I have asked around in the local stores, and the only thing I get are dirty looks.

 

[/quote']

 

 

 

It is in Car battery's but be carefull cause it's super corrosive.

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  • 1 month later...

My reply is a bit late regarding the strongest acids. Aside from the Carborane acids (which are the strongest and least corrosive acids known to man) the strongest acide is a mixture between two compounds, Antimony pentaflouride and Hydroflouric acid. It is 20 quintillion times stronger than 100% conc. sulfuric acid. And its not a toy! It can eat right through your bones.. nothing for an average person to mess around with.

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electrolysis of NaCl soln will liberate Chlorine gas' date=' and leave you with Sodium Chlorate (NaClO3)

on further electrolysis you`ll get sodium PERchlorate (NaClO4)

Carbon electrodes are the most commonly used for this.

[/quote']

Uh, Dont you need more electricity then your average 12volts to get a soln of NaCl to NaClO3?

And platinum is used for Chlorate to Perchlorate

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no, not at all, chlorate production takes place at much less than 12v, as does Perchlorate production. if you`re using 6 or more volts your wasting your anode needlesly. as for Platinum, unless you`re rich and crazy, I wouldn`t bother, Carbon or (I think it`s lead oxide) are normaly used.

some other conductors that have been rendered Passive can be used too.

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no' date=' not at all, chlorate production takes place at much less than 12v, as does Perchlorate production. if you`re using 6 or more volts your wasting your anode needlesly. as for Platinum, unless you`re rich and crazy, I wouldn`t bother, Carbon or (I think it`s lead oxide) are normaly used.

some other conductors that have been rendered Passive can be used too.[/quote']

 

So your saying any more then ~6volts wouldn't make the formation of chlorate any faster?

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not for Chlorate no, actualy even for Perchlorate 6 volts is enough.

but more importantly it`s all about current density, That`s the part that plays the major role in production.

take a look here, I`m sure you`ll find this of some use also: http://www.wfvisser.dds.nl/EN/kclox_EN.html

and will be able to explain at length better than can be done on here.

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Mmm, i took your advice and im using 5 volts from computer psu for the conc. NaCl solution. stuck two carbon rods in, and left it going for a day or two.

 

took out the electrodes, was clear with a little carbon residue, aswell as smelling a whole like the swimming pool and bleech, anyway according to the website instructions, i boiled it to powder form, but it didnt work (as in the test about mixing it with sugar and dropping conc. sulfuric acid on top). so i thought mabye the acid was bad so i mixed the powder i had gotten with aluminium (around 0.1grams or less alltogether) so basicly taking in all the safety precautions, i tried to light it up with a match and a sparkler but nothing happend :(

 

know what i did wrong ?

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hard to say in all honesty, the fact that you smelled Chlorine (and quite a bit while making it from what I can tell) is certainly a Good sign, when these cells are working properly they emit quite a bit of chlorine.

I`m not sure about the Boiling to a powder idea though?

when I`m satisfied I`m not getting any more reaction from my cell, I heat it gently to about 60c and leave it like that for an hour or so. then I just pour it through filterpaper into an evaporation tray and wait patiently.

a good test after is to dry the filter paper you used and touch it with a cigarette (Outside!) and see if it cathches fire.

then you`ll know how good your Batch is :)

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Alright, i did have a filter which i used to get rid of the carbon crap, so if there was a sodium chlorate solution that when through, then some naclo3 would be dried up in the paper, tho when i tried to light it, it was very slow and didnt really catch on fire.

 

I now have some Low sodium salt (50% sodium and 50% potassium chloride) that im gonna try it with, except when i measured 40grams of it and put it in boiling 100ml water, it was weird because more then half didnt dissolve and this was when it was boiling.

 

so anyway im gonna let it go for overnight, if it were to convert to chlorate then the potassium chlorate will crystalize out as it has fairly low solublity. ill try to boil it to around 50%l and let the rest go in the oven( so it wouldnt over heat on the stove and release o2 therefore going back to chloride)

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I`de leave it alot longer than overnight in the cell, when I used to make it that way, I`de run mine for 3 to 4 days (250ml cell) and would get through 2 and a bit 7mm carbon anodes during this time.

I`ve never had a bad batch :)

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I`de say there`s still alot of NaCl left in that batch then (when Sodium Chlorate is sold as a weedkiller, NaCl is added as a fire retardant).

you have a choice at this stage, you can either put the whole lot back in the cell and do it again, OR you can add a little water to it and stir well, then pour off that which remains liquid, the solubility of the chlorate is greater than that of the chloride, so the "Juice" will be largely Chlorate.

Then throw the rest back in the cell :)

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One night is way too short.

 

For 1 mole of NaCl to be converted to NaClO3 you need 6 moles of electrons (at least, probably more, because you loose chlorine into the air and also some chlorate is back-reduced).

 

In order to obtain 1 mole of electrons and supposing you have 1 A of current, you'll need almost 100000 seconds. Roughly speaking, current times seconds must be 100000 for 1 mole of electrons. For 1 mole of NaClO3 you hence need 600000 Ampere-seconds (a.k.a. Coulombs). One mole of NaClO3 is just over 100 grams. So, for 100 grams of NaClO3 you need 600000 Ampere-seconds. With a current of 1 Ampere this means 600000 seconds, which is over one week of current, full-time, 24h per day. With 2 Ampere you still need almost 4 days of current for 100 grams of NaClO3.

 

You see? Be patient and let the whole lot bubble for several days. Occasionally check your cell and if necessary, sometimes add a little water.

 

It, however, is much better to use a current source. As the concentration of chlorate increases, a higher voltage is needed. With a fixed voltage, initially you will have too high a current density (excessive corrosion and formation of oxygen+acid instead of chlorine) and lateron the current density becomes too low. Using current instead of voltage makes the operation of your cell much more consistent. Current determines how many electrons are produced per second, not voltage.

 

I have done a project on this with a modified PSU and a resistor network. I would say, read the theory and try to understand what a current source is and what characteristics such a beast has. For electrolysis experiments this is much better.

 

http://woelen.scheikunde.net/science/chem/misc/psu.html

 

Also keep in mind that with graphite electrodes the current density should not exceed 100 mA/cm². With the graphite rods of batteries this means that using a current well over 1 A you obtain a too high current density, which results in excessive erosion of your rods and production of oxygen+acid instead of chlorine.

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