Patreon preview - Lab notes alternate alcohol testing and stoichiometric testing
Added 2018-09-23 17:50:34 +0000 UTCMore testing!
Comments
I like your videos, your mysterious voice, your suicidal bugs and your reaction to them. Hilarious >D I also like the modelling kit :)
Ragnar Elstad
2018-09-30 15:23:54 +0000 UTCPotassium is very quick in general. Most amateurs can get it done in 8 hours, and there have been some reports of being done in 30 minutes. The trick of adding KOH after heating the magnesium for a bit in alcohol and oil is also known although not really done very much since you could potentially splash hot oil at you. So most avoid it just for convenience.
NurdRage
2018-09-26 03:23:47 +0000 UTCI had something of a breakthrough in terms of the speed of production of metals, though in this case I was trying it with potassium since I kept having problems with any sort of visible yield with sodium. What I did was I got some fine Mg flakes (Fresh turnings from a mill) and blended them up in a blender to produce a fine powder, and I added this to the oil which I heated up to 200C with constant stirring. I added some tert-amyl alcohol and let it run for a little bit, just stirring, then poured in some KOH flakes which instantly started boiling and bubbling very rapidly, producing a white smoke vapor. Within a minute or two I could see spheres of potassium that got larger as they were stirred around and coalesced with others, and within 5-10 minutes I had a very respectable yield of 2-3mm potassium spheres and other smaller particles. One thing I did notice, was that once things stopped bubbling very much you need to turn off the heat since otherwise it seems to oxidize the potassium fairly rapidly, as well as breaking the particles down to smaller and smaller sizes. Not sure how well this will work with sodium, but it was certainly exciting for potassium. I should mention that I do carry forward the filtered, dry oil from previous runs to avoid having dissolved moisture in "fresh" oil ruining yields.
Larry B
2018-09-25 15:05:58 +0000 UTC
