Lab Notes - Alternative glassware protection for sodium production - August 31st 2018
Added 2018-08-31 18:11:34 +0000 UTCFinal high resolution version with equations.
Comments
Dioxane was actually a major breakthrough when i first discovered it. Making sodium by the thermochemical process had been known for decades but no one knew of an easy way to perform the separation. Everything had been tried from hexanes to large macrocyclic aromatics. But nothing worked. Dioxane was the first solvent to have such a significant effect. It is extremely unlikely i'll be able to beat the exhaustive search already performed by the amateur community in the decades earlier. If there was a dioxane alternative in all likelihood someone would have found it before i found dioxane.
NurdRage
2018-09-20 19:43:08 +0000 UTCNow that you have the reaction refined and made much cheaper and accessible would you consider looking into an alternative to dioxane for separating out the sodium? It’s both quite toxic and tedious to produce so another alternative method/reactant would be very welcome! I’ve tried a couple things so far but I’ve realized that you are going to lose a significant part of your product or have to find some very dry reagents, since virtually anything you try is going to contain some water... Annoying. Perhaps you could do a video on some strategies for drying various types of reagents, as part of the work to find a dioxane alternative?
Larry B
2018-09-19 01:48:53 +0000 UTCperhaps you could try making sodium methoxide by the molecular sieves method, then boil off the methanol and add it to untreated NaOH. although perhaps the silicates from leftover sieve dust could reduce yield?
bacon_blob
2018-09-10 18:55:50 +0000 UTCCool stuff!
2018-08-31 20:06:01 +0000 UTC😎👍
Michael Aichlmayr
2018-08-31 19:08:26 +0000 UTC
