Hello,

I've got a few questions about Caustic Soda (actually anything you can tell me about it would be useful :D)

 

What would happen if a truck containing caustic soda for example crashes and the NaOH flows into a river? Would the fish die?

 

Is there a way to decontaminate this river? Maybe adding more water (or an acid) to neutralize it?

The effect of NaOH is that the pH will change.

 

Since I am not sure whether this is homework, I'll leave it up to you to figure out which way the pH is going (up or down).

 

The exact effect depends on how much water there is... so, the size of the river, and the flowrate of the water... and of course the size of the truck.

 

I wouldn't worry about decontaminating the river... because a river flows, it will clean itself. But a lake would need some treatment... I'll leave it to you to find out how to neutralize NaOH... and what will be the remaining pollution (you cannot clean it completely).

You could, in principle, remove the sodium with an ion exchanger and swap it for hydrogen thereby turning the NaOH into H2O.

Teachers google sites like this too so, if you want to use that answer, be sure to explain where you found the idea.

Ion exchanger? Nice. I'll look for that.

And we are allowed to use anything we could for this project. It's not like some exam to test us, it's just a problem and they need to see how we solve it.

 

CaptainPanic, we've found the way to neutralize NaOH if we have little samples (we did that in lab and works) but how would that be done in big quantity?

I can't just say that we let nature repair it because there are fish that can die and all...

 

Ion exchanger? Nice. I'll look for that.

And we are allowed to use anything we could for this project. It's not like some exam to test us, it's just a problem and they need to see how we solve it.

 

CaptainPanic, we've found the way to neutralize NaOH if we have little samples (we did that in lab and works) but how would that be done in big quantity?

I can't just say that we let nature repair it because there are fish that can die and all...

What would happen if some of the NaOH spilled into a chlorinated swimming pool?

Hello,

I've got a few questions about Caustic Soda (actually anything you can tell me about it would be useful :D)

 

What would happen if a truck containing caustic soda for example crashes and the NaOH flows into a river? Would the fish die?

 

Is there a way to decontaminate this river? Maybe adding more water (or an acid) to neutralize it?

 

Sodium Hydroxide will be formed, so i dont think that fish would die...!

as sodium hydroxide is basic

Sodium Hydroxide will be formed, so i dont think that fish would die...!

as sodium hydroxide is basic

 

can you provide ANY evidence to support this?

 

in particular why a "Basic" soln is Safe?

 

personally I`d fancy my chances in HCl rather than NaOH, but that`s just personal preference