Hey,

 

Today I saw on a TV program these people prove that using coke and some tin foil to polish up chrome. It did a really nice job ! better than they leading brands at the moment !Does anyone know what it does that makes coke to effective at this :S ? I can't see anything it could be !:S

Phosphoric acid?

Yeah, just look at the ingredients list. Anything with the word acid after it might be a good culprit.

I have a friend at work that said he and his buddies used to use it when they were doing mechanic work on cars. Worked like a charm apparently.

How much phosphoric acid is present in coke? I though it is just in the 0.01 ... 0.1% range. I bet, that if I take pure phosphoric acid, diluted to this, that it hardly works. There must be something else in the coke as well, but it could be that the small amount of acid helps or catalyses the action of other active ingredients.

could it be setting up a weak cell of some sort?

Chrome (either Cr2O3 or CrO3) will react with Alu in a thermit reaction, could the Mystery ingredient (probably phosphoric acid) be an electrolyte in this?

That was my train of thought too, but I did not want to display my ignorance too far. The hard oxidise layer on the aluminium might provide just the right amount of abrasion, too

so could just like be the acid with the correct abrasion gained from the foil doing the trick

well i got quite a large bit of chrome that i really need to polish up and i dnt want to spend too much money. So im going to buy some PHOSPHORIC ACID 75% , mix with some water . Could you think of anything i could thicken this with so its easier to apply to the chrome ? Then ill scrub with some tin foil !

 

Thnx:D

...assuming you wear acid-proof gloves while you do it, that might work.

yeh but once its diluted i shouldnt need the gloves really should i :S ?

 

Cos i aint got ne lol

I would not want to work with bare hands with H3PO4, unless it is really dilute. But even with just a 10% solution, longer exposure is bad for your skin. A 1-minute exposure is no problem, but if you are scrubbing for several minutes, then you will hurt yourself. Phosphoric acid is corrosive. The low concentration of this acid in coke has a good reason .

ok then well i will use the same amount of coke. I think coke has 1. summin % so i will use about 2% or 3% . Also tin foil is just pure aluminium isn’t it .

 

I have been looking on the ingredients for coke and i cant see anything else inthe list that would have much of a efffect unless its acting as a catalyst or summin