Make Sodium Metal with Menthol (and a bunch of other stuff...)
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- Опубліковано 6 чер 2024
- In this video we make sodium metal from menthol, sodium hydroxide, magnesium, baby oil, and a some lithium if necessary.
First, we get a flask and add in 14g of magnesium metal, this can be obtained from fire starters. Then we add in 20g of sodium hydroxide which is acquired from drain opener. Now the key catalyst is 1-2g of menthol crystals, these can easily be bought online. A magnetic stir bar should be added at this point. On top we add in 125mL of mineral oil, i recommend hypoallergenic baby oil. Finally, 3g of sodium metal is added to jump start the reaction and serve as a drying agent. If this cannot be obtained then the lithium hacked out of an AA energizer battery can be used.
The reaction mixture is connected to a gas bubbler and a thermometer is inserted. Magnetic stirring is applied and the contents kept suspended to prevent hot spots.
The mixture is heated to 120-130 celsius for 2 hours or until bubbling stops, whichever comes first. What's happening is the sodium or lithium metal jump start is reacting with any moisture present and destroying it. This is necessary to prevent damage to the glassware from the highly caustic reaction mixture at higher temperatures. If this damage is acceptable then the jump starter metal may be ignored.
After 2 hours or when the bubbling stops, heating is increased to 200 Celsius. Sodium metal is produced here as the magnesium reacts with sodium hydroxide to produce sodium, magnesium oxide, and hydrogen. Menthol serves as the catalyst, allowing this reaction to proceed in a controlled fashion at 200 Celsius. Other catalysts like tertiary alcohols or borneol may also be used.
Heating is continued until bubbling stops, about 30-40 hours in the case of menthol. After cooling, the sodium can be boiled in dioxane to separate excess magnesium. Alternatively, the sodium can be remelted into an ingot, and the excess magnesium cut away as it tends to settle at the bottom.
Approx yield is 10.9g or 94%
Related videos:
Make sodium metal with domestic chemicals (thermochemical dioxane process): • Make Sodium Metal With...
Make dioxane: • Make Dioxane from Anti...
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#Sodium #Menthol
Less than ten years ago there were people laughed off chemistry forums on a weekly basis for asking for an easy and safe way to make sodium metal. It was thought impossible outside of electrolysis. Sure showed em. Menthol brings this to a new level of accessibility.
Thanks, let's hope the next projects are as successful :)
Yes and because someone asked the question "What if..." now we have this.
Good god.. u know, this REALLY makes me wonder what catalytic process menthol plays in cigarette smoke. I mean i kniw that sounds like im making a joke, but seriously
@@alllove1754 9 out of 10 doctors prefer menthol cigarettes. That makes them as good as medicine, unless you go to the 1 out of 10 doctors that don't work for us. There are always some crackpot doctors that will say something different than what we've demonstrated as scientific fact. We paid for all this research, so we trust the shit out of it, and you should too.
@@buckstarchaser2376 my man, i dont NOT trust it! Thats the only cigs i ever smoke, when i do. I have a pack if kools menthol sitting in a drawer for the last two months, having one whenever theres the right beer combo. Im not a person of blind faith so much when it comes to science, so much as i am one that believes in the double blind studies. Having said that, i switched to the vape several years ago, occasionally desiring the maoi induced effects only a proper nh3 dipped freebased nicotine taylor made offers us. Do you smoke?
The sodium project won't stop, there is still a lot more to research. But i'll be doing some other projects too.
Nice
You sir are an inspiration, I never learned chemistry in school and I didn't realize what a fascinating subject it was untill I stumbled across your channel years ago. I am now doing research on modified high pH stöber reactions which do not use TEOS or TMOS or any other complex silane, I never would have made it this far without you. Thanks
🙏
That was a really fun journey. Id love to see how you remove ethonal from gas next.
New Projects! Would love to see someone tackle L-glucose, but that's probably a step too far for amateurs.
"As you can see, it's a very simple and straightforward process that anyone could have figured out"
LMAO
Yeah, "anyone". Yet, well into the 21st century, NurdRage was the first to have it figured out. Pay some respect for the attempts and failures of our ancestors and never consider things that are emerging only just now, simple.
Yeah, I bet he googled it! /s
Anyone COULD have figured it out, just by going through the same scientific steps that he did to test his process. What was once complex is now simple. In this case it wasn't done because the amateur chemist community simply was, well, too amateur. They focused too much on the how of it (magnesium + sodium hydroxide + catalyst) without giving any attention to the why of it at any point, and that's how NurdRage was himself able to figure it out. @@bormisha
Best Valentine's day evar.
Just how many hundreds (thousands?) of dollars spent on exotic catalysts and solvents before settling on menthol and mineral oil? Wild ride!
When looking at this video and thinking how easy it is to make sodium, remember that a professional PhD chemist spent more than a year of his free time to perfect the process and especially to find a suitable and commonly available catalyst.
And how to get good yealds and not eat the glassware
Luckily we can follow his achievements and build up experience from them
Have fun chemistry extremely interesting I've been learning as much as I can over the last couple years I seem to be getting more and more into it because I love doing
Years of work condensed into 12 minutes. Impressive.
Glad to see this project entering its final stages. A far cry from its somewhat pessimistic beginnings. It’s amazing to see scientific discovery documented AS it happens.
Why thank you!
"Some years ago"
I feel old now
Me too, man, been following this project since it started
This is exceptional, I've been following you for years, even long before Patreon existed and you were fully stuck because you couldn't keep on doing these experiments.
I knew that you always wanted to have some sort of breakthrough experiment, and, I think, this could be it. You've worked for years on this, and I've seen the failures, the successes, the trials and tribulations and the all-out "giving up" stage. I'm so happy that you managed to see this through to a reasonable conclusion.
Sodium metal access to the amateur opens up so many opportunities for new chemists to perfect the art, through having purer end results, to higher yields, to actually being able to do things without shedding hundreds on chemicals that they can't afford on a budget to fuel a hobby passion.
So well done to you sir, you've done the exceptional!
Congratulations!
Thanks!
I totally agree
As a chemist myself I take off my hat to you sir for your persistent and dedication .....
Hope you can publish this and get the recognition you deserve for an excellent application of science and chemistry ...
Hey! I need some help in the chemical field! Are you expert level?
A few tips discovered the hard way: Mg powder/dust requires exceptional magnetic stirring or an overhead stirrer because it tends to form a sludge. Mg shavings don't pack well which means they stir poorly and require a very large flask. Mg turnings or chopped up Mg ribbon is the best compromise, although good stirring is still required.
Use a large, strong stir bar that covers almost the entire diameter of your flask. If you use an undersized stir bar, poor stirring will cause undisturbed pockets of Mg that ultimately forms aggregates. This slows the reaction and, more seriously, traps the stir bar and forms localized hot spots which will overheat and crack the flask. I had this happen and the bottom of the flask cracked after about 24 hours at 200 C. I'm not sure if my stir bars are unusually shitty but despite being PTFE they were wrecked (dark black) at the end of this 24 hour reaction.
If the reaction fails be very careful during cleanup as you're faced with the task of digging chunks of unreacted Mg aggregates out of the flask which are also coated in small globules of sodium. This can easily burst into flame if any moisture hits it, which is a very bad thing if it happens inside the flask. Hydrogen + flame + glass vessel with a narrow neck = exploding glass.
It's not your stir bars being shitty necessarily, it's a problem that Nurdrage discovered in one of his research vids when he was running the reaction with different alcohol solvents - I believe the sodium itself is actually attacking the PTFE in some way, one of the only things that will do that. I would need to go back and find which vid he said that in though.
This could be my problem… I ground my magnesium up very fine and I can’t even get the experiment off the ground period… I guess I should start with a larger stirrer and not grind up my magnesium next time
I'm having this problem. I used a belt-sander to grind fire-starter magnesium blocks into a powder. What I have is more like magnesium wool. What a pain in the ass! This crap doesn't stir for anything. Stirring is absolutely necessary, or the reaction stops, and the vent tube starts sucking up the bubbler oil. I'm having to babysit this brew, tinkering with it every 5min to keep a small magnet bead synced with the motor. Even then, most of the magnesium is sitting on the bottom perimeter of the flask. Ugh! 😣
On the other hand, I am getting tiny beads of sodium forming at way less than 200°C. I think the increased surface area of my magnesium is allowing the reaction to happen at a lower temperature ≈ 130°C.
Wow that sounds even more ground up than mine… yea, I found the more fine it is, the harder it is to stir. I’m going to try using chips next time or else get a top stirrer with a strong motor. That seems the best approach but would take some ingenuity to get the tube and temp all in there as well
What I ended up with was an unknown quantity of very fine beads of sodium. I'm going to have to make some dioxane in order to try to separate the sodium. Meanwhile, I found a ¼" drill bit makes a nice sized chip, for a lot less work. So I'm going to try another run using these "turnings".
Pro tip: cheap magnesium can be found at scrap/junk yards in the form of wheel rims. Ask if you can buy broken mag rims, as these only have scrap value.
just realised i have 4 mags sitting in my shed, just waiting.
ooooh
It's unbelievable that the menthol can works the whole process like menthol without decompose. Best video on this theme on entire UA-cam. Hat down.
Agreed. Surprised it isn't reduced to menthane by the sodium and or lithium.
@@flaplaya
Alcohols are difficult to reduce to alkanes. You have to go around it.
S2N Reaction
Ok, I'm stumped. What exactly is the menthol doing in this process? Is it passing through some kind of alkoxide intermediate before the sodium is reduced?
@@scabbarae
Nurdrage explains it better than me
ua-cam.com/video/PxPjBz_8S3c/v-deo.html
Congratulations on getting this process boiled down to a tutorial. It's been an amazing journey, and I'm grateful that you've taken us all along on the ride with you.
Keep being awesome :D
So cool to see the fruits of all your labor over these last months. Can't wait for the next video!
This is the end of one of the most exciting sagas of youtube videos I have ever watched. I am extremely impressed with what you achieved!
That looks so simple now. It is almost difficult to think of all the steps needed earlier to get to this simple and efficient method. Good job!
I LOVED the Lab Notes series of videos building up to this penultimate result.
I'm glad you're making an advanced video explaining the mechanisms behind why this reaction works. This project is so cool!
HOLY SHIT IT'S OUT
The moment has come. Thank you, NurdRage. Can't wait to see the additional developments in the project!
Kudos man- it’s been great watching all the lab notes for this. So nice to see it all finally come together
Congrats on hitting this monumental milestone! Thanks for sharing all the process to get to this point!
Fueling desires for chemistry. Perfect for Valentine's Day! Look foreward to seeing the new lab.
I've watched how hard and long you and others have worked on this. Congratulations on a job well done.
A great achievement! I’ve been watching the progress of this project since the beginning, it’s been a fascinating learning process!
"And that is how you make sodium. As you can see, it's a very simple and straightforward process that anyone could have figured out."
You can be a real bastard sometimes, you know that? xD
I came here to say this.
His modesty is as astounding as his results
You know you have a really good solution when it seems obvious after you've figured it out
Well done! It’s been awesome watching the process! Most of all, thank you for making the extra effort to publish the full scientific process which is so important for aspiring STEM enthusiasts to see - especially the “failures” you had as this is where the gold truly lies.
I'm so happy for you and the community. I'm glad you have been able to develop a method to produce sodium metal for the amateur chemist.
Thank you nurdrage. Honestly I love science and math so much. These are my favourite videos to watch.
That is crazy! I can't believe it can be that easy, and well, actually at all without fire. Great work and thanks for the knowledge!
An absolute triumph! Thanks, NurdRage, and congratulations!
Thank you for making sodium obtainable! I've enjoyed watching this series, and your other videos.
Congrats! It’s been great watching your process and lab notes.
Awesome summary of your research. I can't wait for the more detailed video explaining the knitty gritty details.
Really appreciate your efforts that went into this sodium production method ! Keep it up !
Explosive carrot
@@justajavajunky haha wonderful
Forbidden Carrot
This series has been truly amazing, seeing more of the behind the scenes work and thought processes provides quite a lot of valuable information that normally isn't readily available. I can't wait to see the advanced video.
Why thank you! the advanced video might take awhile though. :)
@@NurdRage I kept up with the series for months, I think I can handle a wait. Thank you so much for all of your work.
Edit: In hindsight I probably should have worded this a bit differently.
I have studied chemistry around 5 years ago and wanted to make sodium. Since the existed methods were hectic and I gave up. Here after 5 years I'm an electronic engineer, hardly do anything with chemistry. Seeing this made me give production of sodium another shot! Well done! You deserve a medal for this!
Thanks for your hard work, inspiration, and sharing knowledge of chemistry!
Congratulations, the amount of work and quality of results cannot be understated!
You amaze me with the ingenuity in your videos, not only are you skilled but I had no idea you could make sodium without electrolysis. These aren't just replicating papers, you're truly making strides in the field which is hard enough in a professional lab let alone an amateur. As a professional in biology with a passion for amateur chemistry, I don't fully get everything you talk about but I get enough to see how cool your videos are!
It’s really been cool watching this process develop over the months.
Your videos and research have inspired me more than you’ll ever know. Chemistry has always been a curiosity for me. I have no formal education in the subject, and I have been educating myself. I watch your videos, and have been working my way through several college chemistry textbooks for about 2 years now. I’ve built a somewhat impressive amateur laboratory complete with fume hood. I’ve managed to produce such things as HNO3, luminol, hydrazine sulfate, TATP, thermite, smoke bombs, glacial acetic acid, hot ice, and a whole lot more. Thank you for what you do. You are an inspiration to those of us trying to learn chemistry.
wonderful summation video of all the little updates along the way!
It's finally out!!! Wowww! Congrats man :D
Thank you nurdrage for another video... Love your videos.. thank you for my favorite chemistry teacher 😊
Cool to see progression on the sodium project!
Very nice work! I would advise anyone trying this to always cut sodium UNDER mineral oil. This will reduce the amount of oxidation and also minimize the risk of ignition. Cheers!
That's not a worry with fresh made, that's very true for older samples though
You're thinking of potassium. I've never had sodium ignite while cutting. Even with old, dry or large samples. I have with potassium though. Nothing like cutting 100 grams of potassium and it instantly melts and catches fire. Out of the dozens of kilos of sodium that I've handled and cut, nothing even remotely similar has ever happened.
Very nice! Congrats on the completion of your research project!
This along with Nile Red's videos about sodium and potassium metal purification is an amateur chemist's dream come true. THANKS!
I really enjoyed the format this series took.
why thank you!
I started watching these videos over 10 years ago and now Im getting my degree in Chemistry. Thank you for inspiring me.
NOOO!!! I HAVE RUINED YOUR LIFE!!! CHEMISTRY IS A SATURATED FIELD WITH NO JOBS! YOU ARE DOOOOOOOOOOMEEEEDDD1!11!!!!!11!
:)
Congrats on the degree, i wish you success in all you do!
@@NurdRage Dont have my degree just yet, but Im close, thank you so much, it means the world.
Great job, I’ve been waiting to see this for a long time. Thank you for sharing!
This is so cool! I'm going to have to try this on my channel! Love it.
nice to see this all coming together! such a simple video for a process we know took much longer to establish!
Amazing work has been done! I have learned from You alot, thank You!
I'm so glad made the final video... I know the process hard but this was worth it
Great video! Wish I had such resources available when I was taking inorganic chem
Congratulations on the great success. It has been great journey. Ty
has been an honor to follow your investigation until this point... thank you for so much
btw, this: "As you can see, it's a very simple and straightforward process that anyone could have figured out" made me cry laughing, also the "explosive carrot"
It's been an adventure to get here. Many thanks !!
This is just genius! Congrats!
Yeah, a process anyone could have figured out ;-) You have the absolute right to be a bit smug. Knowing how to make sodium this way is neat. Had this been presented at the start as fait accompli, it would have been a good video. As a finale to a research project that you shared with all of us along the way it's brilliant. I don't know that there's another project that's been done like this. This was real science with a new discovery at the end that will very likely get some people interested in chemistry and other research science fields as a possible carreer. I know if I were teaching chemistry, this could easily be used as part of the curriculum. Bravo!
Thank you so much for your work on this(and in general, your channel too)
After a lot of toying with the idea of getting into amateur chemistry, this video got me to go and buy some equipment and begin this project.
Boy the garage smells minty.
I like the oddly satisfying way of cleaning up, purifying, and separating the sodium metal with the 1-4 dioxane!
Wow great job man highly impressed you are a great chemist an true pleasure to follow through the process with you great work 👍
Very nice method. Great job and thank you for sharing your knowledge
Congrats my friend! Great work!
Excellent work!!!
Absolutely brilliant!
I really enjoyed this series, seeing how you overcame the obstacles and optimized to make it accessible to those with a small budget using readily available ingredients. It was a lot more useful and interesting to me than the standard chemistry cooking shows. Thanks also to those who helped fund the research.
I don't know if it possible, but I would like to see a series on making non-recreational drugs. I take a 50+ year old antidepressant, tranylcypromine, that has gone from about $40/mo to $300/mo in about a decade. Of course I'd never take something I cooked up myself, but it would still be interesting to see for educational purposes.
Hype! You've finaly made it
Making it right now, up to 200 and bobble are pretty nice 1/ sec. Using powdered magnesium so hoping I am finishing in 15 hours! boy are those lithium batteries a pain to open up! Thanks a lot Nurd Rage, really enjoy your videos, you Nile Red, Cody etc all very inspiring.
Much impressed by Your work! This very interesting research.
This turned out pretty cool :D
His magnum opus an easy, safer, practical, and available method of making sodium metal probably the first substantial scientific achievement done entirely through UA-cam
All the work and difficulties documented on UA-cam. And the UA-cam community along for the whole progression of the achievement.
You Sir are a Legend.....
You sir, are a saint.
This is incredible. I think i have watched this video ten times
Random eBay store: you gonna order more than 5g of our expensive sodium?
Nurd Rage: nah... thanks for the jump start sodium!
Random eBay store: jump... start?
Lol, it's not that expensive anymore.
www.etsy.com/listing/759853845/sodium-metal-10-25-50-100-grams
@@chaoticchem I wonder why 🤣
Thank you for sharing your knowledge
Very nice work, NurdRage. Very nice indeed.
Very intriguing. An almost unbelievable accomplishment.
So cool to see a process be discovered before the paper is written
You're a genius!
respect to this mans research, and to his dissemination of his results. Chemistry and astronomy are possibly the two areas where a talented person can add to the knowledge base meaningfully and even outperform groups with backup and research funding.so often the little players are scoffed at. give this man a team of undergrads and a few million (chickenfeed in relative terms) and im sure vhe could give many research groups a run for their money and possibly a few tearful thoughts about a change of career. well done
Thanks for posting.
@nurdrage Finally got a chance to make some sodium using this method! I found that you don't need consistent stirring! As long as you break everything up after the first 4 hours or so you're good! I also predried my NaOH somewhat which made it so the jumpstarter quantity wasn't needed or could be reduced significantly and it didnt etch my glassware! Thank you so much for your perseverance and knowledge!
yea I'd like to see the rationalization for the reaction. Looking at menthol, my first guess it is related to the fact that it's covered with lone pairs. really cool work getting the process to this point!
I learned a lot in your videos, its very new...
Watching this "miniature research project" has been some of the most refreshing practical science I've seen in a while.
This was the first channel that intrigued me about chemistry some 6 years ago. So wonderful to see you fire up this channel once more. Thank you, and I look forward to more wonderful videos from you whenever you get the chance!
Bravo 👏🏻 excellent video. Thank you!
How many of these videos can I watch before I’m put on a watch list??
If you need to ask you already are.
If you need to ask, then you're already on said list.
Its a legitimate question for the amateur chemist. Some people here on YT are referring to KNO3 as "potassium based oxygen" instead of "potassium nitrate" to avoid the great YT intellectual clean-sweep. A lot of chemistry channels have been shut down (RIP chemplayer) while others making actual literal bombs (King of Random) are chugging along just fine.
Dunno, but I've made a playlist containing all his sodoum synthesis and lab notes videos. Do you want the link?
7. Then expect a visit from authorities. At least that's how it was for me
Beautiful vid and I'm glad you stuck through it and look it's beautiful 94% without a full lab and lab grade chemicals and you figured it out congrats nerd rage
hats off, very cool, I always wanted to construct a Castner cell but this is very nice for personal use amounts of sodium.
Well made video. Every easy to understand the process.
Nice you can learn more through this
Thank you so much, you're a genius. Nobody ever taught me more about chemistry than you. And I learned a lot already before.
This is really a great synthesis and I wanna try it soon.
It would be interesting to see, how to form NaN3 from this.
Also am still searching for a way to make Nitromethane at home.
Little bit of a late reply but I'm working on the same thing. You can make it from sodium nitrite, which they sell for preserving meat, and chloroacetic acid. You can make chloroacetic acid through direct chlorination of glacial acetic acid (there are youtube videos showing the process if you need information on that.
Really ingenious way
A fantastic process. I have used this according to the protocol shown, for the production of both sodium and potassium. Both with good results. The only modifications I used was to cut the Mg ribbons with a pair of scissors, and to use twice the amount of oil. For potassium production I didn’t use any jump start material, and for the sodium production only 0,5 g sodium. Although I used the same flat bottom flask for both experiments, there was no visible glass deterioration. I used unopened, lab quality, NaOH and KOH, so the amount of adsorbed moisture was minimal.