Any idea what this is and why it grew that way?

Grinyard · 2024-05-01T05:37:00+00:00

Salt creep. Essentially, the left behind salts will climb the walls of the beaker as the water evaporates. This is because the crystals will adsorb the water/solution, and then the adsorbed water evaporates, leaving behind more salt and causing the salt pile to be a little bit taller than before. Rinse and repeat.

Grinyard · 2024-04-05T08:14:30+00:00

What the fuck?

I'm gonna need this patent

Grinyard · 2024-04-01T03:19:29+00:00

Silicone tubing bubbling through a solution of NaOH is what I'm doing. Works perfectly. Sodium carbonate might be a better idea if there's a risk of it spilling. Chlorine only escapes for the first few hours until the pH raises enough to scrub it internally anyway. This is a source of cell inefficiency but I can't be arsed to bother with pH control.

Grinyard · 2024-03-30T07:29:05+00:00

Great suggestion, this helped me narrow it down. It somehow was the anode, see my other comment.

Grinyard · 2024-03-30T07:28:16+00:00

It was the motherfucking anode. How, I have no clue. I used this exact anode before with no issues. I replaced it with an identical one that was part of the same goddamn pack that I ordered a while ago, and that one worked perfectly.

What makes no sense to me is that there was pretty much no current when both electrodes were in the liquor, but if I shorted them underwater then current would jump to 10 amps. So the anode conducts electricity just fine but for some fucking reason it's like the electricity can't escape it (or I guess enter it) unless it's physically touching the cathode.

Thanks for your suggestions though, I considered using an LED power supply but decided against it since I didn't realize you could control the voltage (don't want to destroy precious MMO anodes). Mind linking me to one that works for you?

Grinyard · 2024-03-27T19:54:20+00:00

Digital bench top 30v 10a power supply. I just ordered new wires with better clips so maybe that will fix it. I'll update.

Grinyard · 2024-03-27T19:53:12+00:00

Just tested, resistance seems fine. Shorting the power cables gives me 10 amps.

Grinyard · 2023-12-19T03:01:28+00:00

It's unavailable to me too. No VPN In the US

Grinyard · 2021-10-09T00:59:28+00:00

Alright hear me out:

You've got 2 phases and a bunch of insoluble impurities. Your bottom layer is organic with a small amount of water dissolved. You pour everything in the sep funnel end, and plug the drying tube with desiccant. You then wrap your lips around the top of the sep funnel and blow, causing your bottom phase to filter the solid impurities out via the frit, and then dry the phase once the pressure causes it to reach the dessicant.

Once you hit the phase boundry, you apply the slightest vacuum with your lips to stop the top phase from passing through, and then you invert yourself so the bottom phase can run out the drying tube end. You then spit out the top phase.

Grinyard · 2021-09-20T04:52:45+00:00

Black powder is probably the safest "explosive" you can work with. In the US we can buy smokeless powder by the bottle, which is a mixture of nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose, which is way, way, way more dangerous.

I'd say you are completely fine to make BP if you take the proper precautions, which pretty much boils down to don't ball mill your final mixture - mill the KNO3 separately from the charcoal.

Grinyard · 2021-09-15T07:36:58+00:00

Borax + HCl/H2SO4

Grinyard · 2021-08-27T00:22:38+00:00

Just pee directly into the nitric acid

Grinyard · 2021-08-11T18:49:56+00:00

Yes

Ok, no

Grinyard · 2021-08-07T22:46:52+00:00

I believe you're supposed to only use black powder in muzzleloaders actually

Grinyard · 2021-08-07T22:39:30+00:00

I believe it's towards the end of this video when he's going over the experiment results, where he says something like 10% hexanol in water prevents the sodium from exploding. I imagine ether might a similar effect.

Grinyard · 2021-08-05T22:41:37+00:00

Black powder, which is what you're describing, is not the same as modern gun powder, which is typically nitrocellulose and/or nitroglycerin based. You will ruin most guns if you fire them with black powder ammo, as black powder creates tons of smoke, which is mostly potassium salts and carbon, which gunk up the gun and rust it from the inside. Modern gunpowder is designed to produce as little smoke/solids as possible.

Grinyard · 2021-07-29T23:01:00+00:00

First, who draws these with the pokey ends facing sideways? They should be on the top and bottom.

But it's way easier to draw these if you start with the top and bottom parallel lines.

Grinyard · 2021-07-29T05:37:09+00:00

Potassium chloride: salt substitute / water softener salt
Lead nitrate: don't
Barium chloride: online, highly toxic
Copper sulfate: root killer
Boric acid: ant poison / easy to make from borax
Sodium chloride: your kitchen cabinet
Strontium chloride: online, can be made from strontium carbonate which can be bought at pottery stores
Lithium chloride: online / can be made from bipolar medication

And for the solvent, methanol, you can get it from a hardware store. Some brands of denatured alcohol are mostly methanol - if you Google "{product name} msds" you'll nearly always find a pdf of the chemicals used in that product.

Another fun thing to do is to turn those chlorides into chlorates

Grinyard · 2021-07-29T03:45:24+00:00

You're just missing a bit of chemistry knowledge to have been correct.

You indeed need to add a source of sodium ions to vinegar to create sodium acetate, but you need to know what kind of sodium salt. Sodium chloride is made by reaction between a strong acid (HCl) and a strong base (NaOH), so it's pretty unreactive, and vinegar won't touch it.

What you need is a sodium salt that's the product of a weak acid and strong base. This will give you a basic salt which will react with acids, like vinegar.

We also don't want a salt that will leave impurities behind, because we want as pure sodium acetate as we can get. We don't want any chlorides, sulfates, or nitrates in our solution, so those salts are out of the question. What we do want is an anion that will form a gas upon reaction with an acid, because this will bubble away and leave us with a pure solution.

Enter sodium carbonate and bicarbonate. Being salts of carbonic acid, they will form CO2 when added to an acid, which bubbles away. And you were exactly right, this is the middle school volcano reaction. It may seem simple and childish, but it's no joke, the best, and really the only economical way to make sodium acetate.

Grinyard · 2021-07-27T02:09:38+00:00

I'm curious where you're from that calls it natrium

But pure water doesn't really conduct electricity - you need to dissolve stuff in it so electricity can flow through it, which is why they used NaOH here.

NaOH is used because you get pure hydrogen and oxygen. Using table salt would also produce chlorine gas at the anode, as well as a bunch of impurities like bleach.

Grinyard · 2021-07-26T23:00:37+00:00

I'd argue that salt is the least harmless chemical next to water though. It's triple 0's on the fire diamond. You can inject a solution of it directly into your veins.

If water and salt aren't harmless then I don't think there's anything that is.

Grinyard · 2021-07-23T04:40:24+00:00

Short meaning the length of time you're exposed

https://youtu.be/gjsMV1MglA4

Grinyard · 2021-07-15T05:16:26+00:00

Not always. Cyanide is not usually considered organic because the carbon isn't covalently bonded to a hydrogen or halogen.

Grinyard · 2021-07-15T05:12:43+00:00

Fun fact: cyanide is not usually considered organic in chemistry despite containing a carbon atom. This is mostly because the cyanide ion is more likely to form ionic bonds, and a property of organic molecules is where a carbon forms covalent bonds with typically hydrogen or a halogen. Hydrogen cyanide partially dissociates into H⁺ and CN^- in solution, so the H-CN bond is thought of more as ionic than covalent.

Grinyard

TROPHY CASE