You can make it into perchlorate using the positive plates from an old lead acid battery. Make sure the plate is fully formed then leach the sulfuric acid out with baking soda water. Then soak in distilled water, then use some salt water. The cathode material really can be anything you like. 🤓
Can you make Sodium Chlorate from lead, then adding salt to water and H2SO4 then electrosis, and can you make explosive with this for replacing Potasium Chlorate?
I needed this information, Thank you. Was having issues with the time scale, didn't realize it was weeks. Kept wondering why nothing after 4 or 5 days. Thanks again.
Fun fact, you can easisy remove the iodine by dry heating the salt in a oven or even a pan. Also, to remove anti caking agents, you can dissolve the whole pack in water to make a saturated or near saturated solution and then filter through a coffee filter. Then, you can boil/evaporate the water to get pretty pure NaCl.
I think dishwasher salt is even purer without any anti-caking agents, come in bigger crystals though so takes longer to dissolve. Also if you haven't run the cell to completely use all of the chloride then I think your product will contain a level of chloride in it as chloride drops out first.
Maybe I have an idea for an advanced Setup. Therefore you would need a second bottle, that serves as a reservoir for fresh NaCl. What is further needed, is a small heater, under this NaCl-reservoir, to prevent the NaClO3 from cristalizing out in that bottle. Few Watts eg. from a tiny peltier module, that (maybe) should be electronically adjustable, should do the job, if placed on the bottom of the flask, right below the NaCl. And aditionally you would need a tiny and cheap peristaltic pump (that can not be effected by corrosive agents, because it does not come in direct contact), could be used to mix and pump the liquid around very slowly between the both bottles. What I expect is, that from a point on, the NaClO3 would continously cristalize out in the coldest part of the system, while the solution is getting continously freshed up with new NaCl from the second Bottle. I didn't test it, but if that works, it would be a very comfortable way to produce NaClO3 crystals without too much work , as the NaCl can get filled up any time and also the crude NaClO3-crystals could just get sieved out. That would be a nice micro production unit, especially good, if you could power it with a solarmodul, to turn sun energy into an useful oxidizer for almost nothing.
Please don't feel demotivated. Your videos are very educational and are even better than Nile red's. Soon you will get more views, likes and subscribers
@Lázár🏳️🌈⃠ ... Nile red likes to put on a show 😂 he is in if for the money, he only uploads when he wants to and his chemistry is expensive and inaccessible for most people. For learning and chemistry on a budget this is the best chanel online! No adverts and self promotion ❤
@@Jawstdon’t think it is for the money because he started at his parents garage and the got his dream fume hoodes setup and he pays rent for it, and from time to time he goes back to his parents garage for fun I DONT THINK IT IS A GOOD IDEA TO COMPARE THE CHANNELS BECAUSE NILE RED CAN DO A LOT OF SOLUTIONS AND ELEMENTS HE CANNOT DO but it is still a really good channel but not as good as nile red Edit: srry dictation mistake
Both are awesome Scrap Science is amateur accesible while nile red is fun to watch for the chemistry behind it, even tho it might not be accesible for the amateur I personally find myself rewatching scrapscience, nurdrage, thy's videos many times! they are great and that chemist has confirmed they actually are in some sort of network lmao
Nice video. Now you need to make a theoretical/historical video explaining just how the electrodes were developed. Ruthenium and iridium dioxide? There must be a story there.
Would love to see you put out the perchlorate video. Your KClO3 video was a great guide. I've got a good yield and would like to take a stab at KClO4. There is def room for a good guide on the subject.
I'm slowly building up to it, haha. I keep putting it off because I feel like I need to learn more about perchlorate cells before I actually build one. Additionally, given the size of my channel now, I think it's possible that any video I make on perchlorate cells might become one of the most widespread of its kind on UA-cam (that's not saying much - there are just so few videos about perchlorate cells here...), so I think it really needs to be a very well-researched production. It'll come eventually!
@@ScrapScienceplease make a perchlorate cell soon 🙏 there is so little information on youtube and i dont know wich anodes to use how to destroy the remaining chlorate and i think your video could help me qnd other hobby chemists
you need to load in a lot of sodium chlorate to do a perchlorate cell. I usually make the electrodes for it myself by careful electrodeposition of lead salts on coated Ti.
I've always wondered about these deposited PbO2 anodes. Doesn't something simpler work? Like anodizing some lead in sulfuric acid or copper sulfate or whatever. Make them nice and black with oxide. Or is that too thin?
Interesting... maybe I'll need to make some more at some point then. And yes! I'm a fan of your work on PbO2 anodes. It's a little beyond what I can manage myself, but it's very impressive to watch nonetheless.
@@6alecapristrudel that will not work because you need either a nonporous or thick mesoporous PbO2 deposite which can only be done with careful electrodeposition. It also needs careful control of the plating current density and bath temperature to make a good enough anode for long term use.
@@CatboyChemicalSociety Ok fair enough. I was just wondering since it seemed so easy lol. I managed to make a PbO2 rod as thick as my pinky finger once by accident. I was making some acid from CuSO4 with this thick rod of solder as anode. It was holding up nicely, but after I plated out the copper I saw that I was leaching tin out of the anode. So I kept going. I got over 20g of tin out of the solder without it changing shape at all. I assume what was left in the rod is some sort of porous PbO2. It was noticeably lighter and cracked instead of bending. Not sure what alloy it was since 60/40 doesn't really leach tin IME. Higher tin content probably.
@@6alecapristrudel indeed its fine in an environment containing SO4 ions because the Pb2+ species is not very mobile in this liquid due to insolubility of PbSO4 and thus the anode will not corrode and instead oxidize to PbO2. but in electrolytes containing chloride/chlorate the ions will be more mobile which will cause them to migrate to the cathode and plate out lead metal. This also causes the anode structure to corrode if the liquid reaches the lead layer but while this process can be halted at pH of 9 it still will occur enough to create these stalactites of PbO2 due to this effect which still corrodes the substrate.
Ok so what is the difference between this and the Chlor alkali process They both involve the electrolysis of saltwater but it forms sodium hydroxide instead of chlorate
A chlorate cell is (from a technical perspective, at least) extremely simple - electrolysis of a choride solution with inert electrodes. A chloralkali cell, on the other hand, requires a separator between the anode and cathode, to ensure that the products on each electrode are kept separate. In a chlorate cell, the cathode generates hydrogen and hydroxide ions. The anode will oxidise chloride ions, and with the hydroxide ions freely available to interact with the anode (no separator between the electrodes), this oxidation of chloride in the presence of hydroxide will yield hypochlorite ions. These hypochlorite ions can eventually be oxidised again by the anode to form chlorate ions. In a chloralkali cell, the cathode once again generates hydrogen and hydroxide ions. However, due to the separation of the cathode and the anode (with a porous diaphragm or an ion exchange membrane), the oxidation of chloride ions on the anode is not performed in the presence of the hydroxide ions, leading to the oxidation product of chlorine gas instead. Overall, the anode will make chlorine gas in this setup, whilst sodium hydroxide will accumulate around the cathode.
21:19 naclo3 has higher deflegration/detonation temperatures with oxidant-fuel admixtures compared to the potassium salt. Which is why it's brighter. As far as power, there are regards in which one is more powerful than the other depending on the circumstances. Overall they are equal but not identical. As far as what's on paper, kclo3 has an oxygen balance of +39.2, whereas naclo3 is +45. That doesn't necessarily mean as much as it seems, considering that nano3 has higher OB than the both of them but is far weaker in most regards.
So this will probably be the last 5 questions i will ask about this video , 1 being : i have got a glass jar witch will be suitable for my cell but i need a lid that can resist chlorine gas , my lid has got a white coating at the inner part and its metal But i want to know if it will not dissolve or corrode . Question : What material or lid did you use? Question 2 : will any ATX power supply do and does it need to have a specific amperage and what section of the power supply did you use (i think you used the input to the motherboard but just to be sure) . Question 3 : i need to know how much salt i need to add around the course of 20 days Question 4: i have some fiber glass sheet laying around, but with filtering out the hypochlorates, must it be fiber or can i use a small sheet in the funnel. Question 5 : How did you crystalise / dry the crystals because you did not film this in your video 🤔. I hope you will react to this comment.
No worries! Answers are as follows: 1) If it's the type of jar I'm thinking of, the white coating is not enough to stop the lid from being attacked by the chlorine and oxidising solution. You need a jar with a plastic lid if you want to avoid corrosion. The jars I use in my own chlorate cell videos have a thick (~5mm) plastic disc underneath the metal that is capable of protecting it. I found them in a garage sale and I've actually been unable to find anything else like them... 2) Most ATX power supplies will provide appropriate current for any moderately sized chlorate cell. I've never seen one that would be inadequate for the task. For my own cells, I used the 12 volt output hooked up to a buck converter to give me controllable voltage and current. The exact current you need will depend on the surface area of your electrodes, the size of your cell, and your personal preference. 3) That will depend on the size of your cell and how much chlorate you want. This isn't really something that can be explained in a UA-cam comment alone, so you'll need an understanding of stoichiometry to do these calculations. As a starting point, this website gives an overview of runtime for a certain quantity of starting chloride material: www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html 4) Is the fibreglass sheet fibrous or solid? As long as liquid can flow through it, it should work. You just want to use it as a filtering medium. 5) I talk about the crystallising and drying stages from 14:03 to 17:50. In particular, I show my method of drying the crystals at 17:01. Hope that helps!
Stainless steel will not work for this process when used as an anode. The only easily-purchased anode choices are platinum, MMO (as I've used in this video), and graphite/carbon electrodes. I go into this in more detail in my other video on chlorate cells (link in the description).
My friend, if you leave the sodium chlorate cell for a long time, even after the chlorate is formed, and then continue the electrolysis, can the sodium chlorate turn into sodium perchlorate?
вообще-то самый простой способ получить -ClO3,это пропускание хлора в ГОРЯЧИЙ раствор щёлочи Na,KOH.Поэтому можно было бы вести электролиз горячего раствора.Положительный электрод ,положить на дно,чтобы выделяющийся хлор как можно дольше находился в растворе, и вверху высокого сосуда встречался со щелочью и отрицательным электродом.Выход больше.А угольные электроды для этого не подойдут?(rus)
Can the sodium chlorate decompose when it is boiling too hot? And what happens if it is boiled inside a metal pot? Mine turned a bit yellow, so i put it back into the cell because i am suspecting it decomposed again
Boiling the solution definitely won't decompose the sodium chlorate, so there are no worries there. However, a metal pot probably isn't the best, as it might be oxidised by the chlorate. Boiling it in glassware is the best way to go. It's probably not really necessary to put it back in the cell, since you're not really seeing decomposition here.
Dude I love this shit I love how u do it on the home dyi type like following your directions I think I could pull this off. You got yourself a sub brother.
Brother, I do not know why the electrolysis process does not work for me. I do electrolysis of a salt solution for two days, the amount of water is ٨٠ ml, but all I get is sodium hypochlorite only and with a very strong concentration. Sodium chlorate will crystallize within ١٠ hours, especially with this amount of water that I use. Please describe the problem to me, my brother. Thank you.
Unless you are constantly adding sodium chloride to the cell, sodium chlorate will never crystallise from solution. The chlorate is more soluble than the chloride. Additionally, what electrodes are you using and what current are you running things at? The current will determine your reaction speed.
I was thinking exactly the same about your leftover Nacl salt into the cell, but what happened to me was at some point, the electrolyte was concentrated with Naclo3 that didn't want to ppt out, and at the bottom of the cell there was a bunch of undissolved Nacl salt. Any idea why that happened ?
My dear friend, thank you for your effort, but please, I have a question that concerns me very much, and I hope you can answer it. My cell operates with an appropriate current, and even the amount of gases generated by the electrodes is normal, but with the passage of two days of not adding more chloride to the cell, the amount of gases increases in large quantities. Is this a result of the decrease in chloride in the cell, or what?
@@ScrapScience No, the current and voltage themselves did not increase anything, and as for the electrodes, I use carbon electrodes, and as another note? When I want to extract sodium chlorate from the solution, I do not evaporate half the amount of water because the crystallization process does not work for me, meaning the chlorate does not crystallize at the bottom. No matter how much I evaporate half the amount of water and leave it to cool, I do not find any chlorate crystallization. Instead, I evaporate all of the water until only salt remains. Is this the case? It is true, and even if it is true, how do I separate chloride from chlorate after the total evaporation process?
An increase in gas formation still sounds most likely to be from the cell drawing more current as it increases in temperature (this is common for cells that are supplied with a fixed voltage). However, if you're directly measuring current and confirming that it is not changing, it's a possibility that you've begun generating more oxygen as the choride level drops, though this is still a very strange situation. If you're unable to crystallise chlorate out of the cell upon volume reduction, you probably just haven't made enough. Do diagnose this properly, I'm going to need to know a lot more about your cell: How big is your cell (in mL)? How much current has it been drawing? How long did you run the cell for? How much chloride did you add? And in what intervals? Did you include other additives? What are the surface areas of your electrodes? To answer your final question, simply boiling down the cell solution to dryness will give you your chlorate. However, it will definitely be contaminated with significant chloride impurity (as you've suspected), and will need a recrystallisation if you want a pure product. What do you actually need the chlorate for? It's possible a potassium chlorate cell would be more appropriate for your needs...
What would happen if you just used a large iron or mild steel bar as the anode? Sure it would oxidize rapidly but couldn’t you use a magnet to clean the solution, instead of having to use expensive inert electrodes ?
The problem isn't inherently the oxidation, because as you've noted, it's possible to remove oxides from solutions. The real issue is the fact that the oxidation of the anode will completely replace the desired reaction of forming chlorate ions. The oxidation of iron (or any other standard metal for that matter) is an easier reaction than the oxidation of chloride to chlorate, so all the energy you put into the cell will go towards destroying your anode, and virtually none will go towards the reaction you want.
Yep, graphite does also break down. This is mostly due to an extremely small degree of oxidation on the graphite structure (a few small sections are oxidised to CO2, breaking apart the surface of the graphite material). In contrast to the reactions that occur on iron, nickel, copper, or any other standard metal, the oxidation of graphite is an extremely minor reaction, allowing most of the input energy to go towards chlorate generation.
Hey way late, but why is it that the chlorate precipitates out first before the chloride? The chlorate has a solubility of 106g/100ml and the chloride is only 36g/100ml. So shouldn't the chloride precipitate first?
Generally, yes. Chloride should precipitate first if you increase the concentration of both. However, in this case, we don't just have a mixture of the chloride and chlorate - the cell is actively converting the former into the latter. At the beginning of the run, we have a saturated solution of chloride, and we then start turning this into chlorate. As we do this conversion, we physically add more and more chloride to the cell to account for the amount we're converting, keeping the chloride concentration close to the saturation limit. Repeating this process for a while keeps the chloride levels relatively constant (not enough to start crystallising out), while the chlorate concentration steadily increases. Eventually, after enough chloride addition and enough electrolytic oxidation, we have such an excess of chlorate in solution (>100g/100mL) that it must start crystallising out. That's the basic idea anyway. It gets a little more complicated when you have to take solubility products into account.
@@ScrapScience Thank you, that makes sense, but if I did a recrystallisation by dissolving the product in the water and boiling it should I expect the chloride to now precipitate out first since the concentration would now be increasing for both? Or will the chlorate still precipitate first because of the solubility curve. Edit: also to add, wouldn’t it be better to not boil down your final solution and instead just keep topping it off with the chloride, decant the top and take the crystals? So instead of taking 2 weeks for you to start getting the chlorate you just add some chloride to the super concentrated chlorate solution and get some more on demand?
For your first point: Yeah, if you crystallise exclusively by boiling down a mixture of sodium chloride and chlorate, you'll get the chloride crystallising out first. However, the difference in solubility curves is extremely useful if you don't quite crystallise out any chloride in the boiling step. If you manage to boil down the solution to the point just before the chloride crystallises, you can stop there and allow the solution to cool. The solubility of chloride is almost independent of temperature, so none will crystallise on cooling. However, the chlorate solubility sharply decreases with cooling, so you force the chlorate to drop out. Again (to summarise that lengthy explanation), boiling alone won't give you the chlorate, but if you stop boiling at the right time, you can just crystallise the chlorate by taking advantage of the solubility curves (as you're referring to in that last sentence). For your edit: Are you talking about doing future runs of the chlorate cell? In that case, yes, the final decanted solution from this cell would be an ideal starting solution to make a new chlorate cell. It's already saturated in chlorates and ready to go for more electrolysis.
Good video! It is not clear to me for 14 minutes when you filter through a funnel into a larger container. Do you filter everything into a bowl and bring to a boil? Full content?
At that point in the video, I'm just filtering everything, and then placing the filtered solution back into the original beaker to be further boiled down. You've got the correct idea here.
Only with very pure chlorate, the correct electrodes (MMO anodes will not work), and an additive to prevent back-reduction. I'll eventually make a video about this.
Hello brother, I have a question, how can I add sodium chloride to the cell? Do I add it in the form of a fine powder or make it dissolve in water? It was added 👍👍👍
fantastic video, love it. Can't believe I haven't heard about this stuff sooner. I'm thinking about using carbon rods as my electrodes, how do I go about filtering their particles from the solution? It isn't a particularly big issue since I'm planning to use it for pyrotechnics anyway, but I also would like find the most efficient ratio of oxidizer to fuel and a precontamination would make that a lot less precise.
Filtering is a little tricky since the oxidising solution tends to eat through paper. If you're careful and don't apply too much pressure to the filter, you can probably still get away with using paper towel or a coffee filter though. Note that the use of carbon will probably make your chlorate yellow even after filtering, but the contamination is generally extremely minor despite the strong colour.
First let it settle for a day or so and decant it, to get rid of most carbon particles and after that, I would press a cigarette filter into a tubing, so that it's sealed up with the walls and pump the solution through it. That should be good enough to get it clear again.
@@ralfvk.4571 Thanks for all the tips! Decanting worked well enough (the solution had been settling for weeks, I've been too busy lately to take care of it earlier sadly). I just filtered the rest through a coffee filter, which worked well enough to get rid of the particulates at least. Sadly, I'll never know how much chlorate I had in solution; as I was boiling it, the ""heat proof"" glass I was using shattered and spilled the solution everywhere. lmao. I'll try again soon (I have a much bigger and higher amperage setup prepared), and maybe attempt that cigarette filter trick. not sure yet.
That’s an extremely broad question. First of all, 12 volts is way too high for this process. A current-controlled supply is ideal, and standard cells will probably require 3-5 volts for a reasonable current draw. The runtime of the cell will depend on many factors, including: - The size of the cell - The set current - The desired quantity of chlorate - The anode/cathode choice - The current density on the anode/cathode - The temperature of the cell - The pH control For any given cell, you can calculate the theoretical production rate. This requires some understanding of stoichiometry and how charge transfer relates to current, and isn’t something I can explain in a single UA-cam comment. You’ll need to do some research here if this type of calculation isn’t familiar to you.
Okay, so we're talking about hypochlorite. Designing your own system is pretty useless in my opinion. You can buy hypochlorite generators for like $10 online.
Does Sodium chlorate have the same anti bacterial effect as potassium chlorate? We used Potassium chlorate for strep throat as a gargle. Can sodium chlorate work as well? What about wound wash?
The decanting, washing and drying sequence after crystallization is missing (16:21). It would have been very useful to observe and understand how the pure crystals that we see in the bags are obtained. To concentrate the NaClO3 from bleach, after boiling and evaporation, I crystallize the evaporated solution up to 1/3 remaining in a porcelain or Pyrex or Arcopal plate by reducing the temperature gradually, so as not to remix the salt with chlorate due to bubbles. I obtain a crust composed overall of 1/3 chlorate, slightly different in color from salt and very hard. The NaClO3 being below due to its late crystallization. I cook this crust and after cooling, I scrape and brush as much salt as possible to release the chlorate. I make pieces of it and quickly soak them in cold water to remove the remaining salt stuck to them. Then I dry the pieces a lot with concentrated chlorate. The removed salt can be treated in the same way to recover some NaClO3.
i used aluminium anodes for a quick hho generator experiment, it generates gas as expected but rapidly produces aluminium oxide in the bottle, which is not desired
Yeah, I didn't re-dry the potassium salt before the test, that might be it. However, the potassium salt isn't actually hygroscopic, it's just the sodium salt in that regard, so it shouldn't have mattered anyway... Maybe I just didn't dry it well enough to begin with.
The inert anode in this case is a mixed metal oxide (MMO) anode - also known as a dimensionally stable anode (DSA). It is a titanium substrate coated with a mixture of ruthenium dioxide and iridium dioxide. Platinium also works. So does graphite.
For the cathode, many metals can be used (titanium, stainless steel, mild steel, and nickel can all be good options). For the anode, stainless steel definitely won't work, and you are severely limited in your choice of anode material. The only reasonable choices here are platinum, graphite, or the mixed metal oxide I use in this video. Basically every other metal will oxidise, fall apart, and leave you with zero chlorate product. I talk about this in a little bit more detail in my other video on chlorate cells, which you can find in the description here.
Hello, I'm planning to make nacl03 in the same way as in the video, maybe I'll use 500 grams of salt and use carbon electrodes from a size D battery,Please give me advice, what voltage and current to use? how much water is needed? And how long does it take for electrolysis?
If you want to know about the basics of the process, you should watch my video on the potassium chlorate cell. It's linked in the description, and goes over most parts of the general process. This particular video is more of a sequel to that one, where the process is modified for the sodium salt. As for the voltage and current, the general rule is that you should use whatever voltage will give you 20 mA per square centimetre of exposed anode area (for graphite electrodes specifically). If this requires more than 5 volts, you should ignore this rule and keep the supply at a 5 volt potential. A current and voltage controlled power supply is best here, since you can then set the maximum voltage to 5 V, and the maximum current to 20 mA per square centimetre of exposed anode area. For the amount of water you need, this will depend on how you want to run the cell, and how big you want the cell to be. Do you want a batch process where you will be slowly working through your 500 g of starting material? Or do you want to do everything in one go? The simplest way to go about this is to just use enough water to dissolve everything, and electrolyse from there. For the runtime, this is a subject too complex to explain in a UA-cam comment. It will rely on the quantity of starting material, the current, and the efficiency of your cell, among other things. You'll have to do some research and some stoichiometric calculations here. I haven't yet found a good resource for doing these calculations, but this is a relatively good start: www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html
The more recrystallisations that are performed, the less NaCl will be included in the product. If exceptionally pure chlorate is required, three or four recrystallisations may be needed (though this will also lose product, so it's a tradeoff). And yes, recrystallisation of the starting salt could be done, but it's not really going to impact the overall process, since most common impurities won't interact through the electrolysis anyway.
It's a little difficult to explain the basics of this kind of calculation in a UA-cam comment, so I'll direct you towards a website that gives good explanations on how to make predictions of the cell runtime and production rate: www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html
@@ScrapScience Hmm could there be something wrong there's no chlorate crystalizing even though I pumped the amps to 10 but there's definitely hypochlorite being made am I just too impatient I checked the calculations and I will use them next time because I don't really remember how much salt I used.
The time things take to crystallise will depend on the volume of the cell, how much salt you initially added, the temperature of the cell, whether or not you're topping up with more salt as you go, and whether you're running a sodium or potassium cell, among other things. Without knowing how much salt you added to begin with (or any of the other factors mentioned above), it's pretty much impossible to predict when you'll get crystals. If you're running a sodium cell, it will take a long time to get crystals (if you get any at all). Generallym, you'll only get sodium chlorate crystals if you add more chloride than is required for a saturated solution. If you're running a potassium cell however, the crystals are much easier to get, and will usually come out within a few days of running a cell this size.
@@ScrapScience I added some more salt yesterday. Does the voltage increase when the chloride concentration is decreasing and is it possible that only hypochlorite is being made but not chlorate
It's possible. The small amount of iodate content in iodised salt won't affect the process to any large degree. Your final product will likely be contaminated with traces of iodate, but this is unlikely to be a big deal and can be fixed with good recrystallisation techniques.
On a short timescale, the cell heats up a little due to ohmic resistance. As a result, the conductivity increases and you need less voltage to pass the same amount of current.
If you run the hydrogen and chlorine gas mix through a UV-C chamber or burning the mix in a "chlorine furnace", you can also make hydrochloric acid at the same time as making the chlorite.
This may be a difficult problem to diagnose. Which electrode is your cathode and which is your anode? What is your voltage/current? What are you using as the vessel for your reaction? And how are you making your connections to your electrodes?
@ScrapScience graphite is my anode and stainless steel my cathode, I'm using 10v with as much current as my supply can give but I haven't measured it, should be enough because it's a 12v 50a supply. I don't think the 10v should be a problem for the reaction, maybe make it more inefficient. The connection is a wire tightly wound around both the electrodes and the vessel is a glass jar i had. By the way sorry for leaving two comments, I didn't notice it was the same channel, my bad.
Haha - no need to apologise! With a voltage that high, you won't affect the way that the reaction runs, but you will get a lot of heat in your cell and your anode will degrade very quickly. When graphite disintegrates, you tend to get a yellow colouring in solution (nanoscale particles of graphite seem to have this colour). You might be able to minimise this with a lower voltage - a maximum of 4.5 V is generally ideal. It might be an ugly colour, but it ultimately doesn't affect anything for the reaction, so it's up to you whether you want to minimise it. Alternatively, the yellow colour could possibly be coming from the stainless steel. If you leave the electrodes sitting in the solution without current running through them, the stainless steel can be attacked by the oxidisers in the mix. Hence, always avoid leaving the electrodes sitting in the cell if you're not applying a voltage. Hope that helps!
@@ScrapScience thank you for the answer, I have a question that might be a little dumb though, if it generates hypochlorite during the reaction, why isn't hypochlorite solution used from the start? Sodium hypochlorite solution is very easy to get, so I guess that if it isn't used it's for a reason, but I don't know exactly why. Again, sorry if the question is too dumb.
Not a dumb question at all! You could start with sodium hypochlorite if you wanted. There are two main drawbacks though. First, it's simply more expensive (per mole) as a starting material. The extra electricity costs associated with using chloride are miniscule in comparison to the extra costs of using hypochlorite. Next, making feedstock additions to the cell is difficult when using hypochlorite, since it generally comes in solution. When using it, adding more feed into the cell will inherently increase the cell's volume by a lot. This becomes a big problem when you want to make lots of chlorate. Also, if you're going to start with hypochlorite, you might as well just make the chlorate by boiling a hypochlorite solution instead of going through the electrolysis route.
Leaving the electrodes in a chlorate/hypochlorite solution without current flowing through them is generally a very bad idea, since it damages the anode severely.
In I do not add sodium chloride to the cell constantly and I use carbon electrodes for the electric current it is ٤ volts and I use ١٠٠ ml of sodium chloride solution and the cell works with great effort and gases flow in very large quantities the temperature is approximately 25 only the cell becomes warm after running the cell for 5 hours the concentration becomes hypochlorite Sodium is strong, and will it work if I run the cell until the chloride concentration reaches a very low level, then I evaporate the solution until sodium chloride appears, but what are the signs that indicate that the chloride concentration is very low?
There are no reliable signs that will always tell you when the chloride concentration is low. You will need to work this out by calculations involving your expected cell efficiency, quantity of chloride, and cell current. I don't really understand anything else you're asking here, sorry.
Could you please explain why exactly there’s no much chloride left in the output material. I mean why are you so sure the most of the chloride is left in the solution? I’m trying to understand how it works as per idea I have the separation between chloride and chlorate should be bad as chlorate is more soluble so it should kinda tend to stay in solution more than chloride. I like chemistry but I never fully understood the idea of what you’ve done. Thanks!
A great question! This is rather complicated to explain in a single UA-cam comment, but I'll give it a try. In the case of having an equal stoichiometric amount of sodium chloride and sodium chlorate in solution, you're completely correct that chloride would precipitate if you boiled down the solution or cooled down a saturated mixture. However, we didn't have equal amounts of each in solution. We had a little bit of the chloride and a LOT of the chlorate. In this case here, we could rely on the difference in solubility curves between the two salts (which you can find here: shorturl.at/rOR48 ) to get our crystallisation to work. When crystallising, we aimed to boil down the solution (reducing its volume) to the point just before the chloride crystallised. At this point, we stopped heating the solution and allowed it to cool. The solubility of chloride is almost independent of temperature, as you will see from the linked graph, so none crystallised on cooling. However, the chlorate solubility sharply decreased with cooling, so since we had so much in solution, we forced the chlorate to drop out even though it's more soluble. Boiling alone won't give you the chlorate, but if you stop boiling at the right time, you can just crystallise the chlorate by taking advantage of the temperature solubility curves.
Do basicly if I use graphite rods Change them if they corrode And after it's done I hot filter it to get rid of the carbon particles it should be the same right ?
Yep! That'll do the trick. It's generally pretty difficult to filter out all of the graphite particles though, and your product might still have a slight colour after you crystallise it. This isn't a problem for most purposes though.
After I filtered the crystals, I just rinsed the crystals with ice cold water as they were sitting on the filter paper. This rinsed away any adhered NaCl solution. (The rinsing water needed to be cold to avoid redissolving too much of the product)
@@ScrapScience little update. Whatever I manage to precipitate or crystalize out of solution, I'm assuming is 25-30% purity. No matter how many times I try to recrystalize, it is contaminated with what I assume is sodium chloride. My starting solution is saturated to the point of recrystalizing the chloride approximately 10°c below ambient temperature (~5°). Is this caused by not enough time under electrolysis, insufficient current/voltage (3.3v @ 2A CC) or starting solution?
A quick question: wouldn't it be easier to simply evaporate the chlorate solution in the sunlight to get the crystals? Why the extra effort of boiling and crystalization? 🤔
Boiling and recrystallisation is much, much faster than evaporation. I'd definitely consider it the most convenient option, even if it's not technically as easy as evaporation.
You can, but your solution (and product) will be filled with microscopic particles of graphite due to the slow erosion of the electrodes. These particles are very difficult to filter out, and will make your chlorate product appear darker. Additionally, the graphite electrodes eventually need replacing. If you don't mind either of these caveats, graphite electrodes are fine to use for this process.
how about after i finish the electrolysis process using the graphite electrodes i filter the solution using coffee filters then i let it sit for a few days, after that i think the sodium chlorate will cristalis and the left impurities would stay in the solution ???🙂@@ScrapScience with the added bonus that the chlorate would be more than 99% pure at this case
Can you make Sodium Chlorate from lead, then adding salt to water and H2SO4 then electrosis, and can you make explosive with this for replacing Potasium Chlorate?
It probably means that your cell isn’t completely sealed. Provided you’re doing this outside with good ventilation (which you definitely should be regardless), it’s not something to worry about too much. I mean, fix the seal if you can, but it’s not a disaster if you’re unable to neutralise the minimal amounts of chlorine generated by the reaction.
I have one question how's the prongs (electrodes) on the cell not short out seeing how u have em going through a metal lid? Just heat shrink the good where they go through the lid?
I am using machine translation, so you may not understand exactly what I am saying. I have a question. The website I referred to says that the temperature of the solution must be high during electrolysis, but do I have to do this? It also says that hydrochloric acid must be added to make the solution acidic.
You don't need to keep the temperature high or do pH control to build a working cell. Doing these things will increase efficiency (if you perform both techniques), but they are complicated to set up and are definitely not essential.
Does this mean that it is only the concentration of the solution that determines whether the brine becomes sodium hypochlorite or sodium chlorate during electrolysis?
Concentration of your initial chloride doesn't have much to do with it. With no pH control, you will oxidise chloride to hypochlorite, and then when the concentration of hypochlorite gets high enough, you will oxidise it into chlorate. This is two steps of anodic oxidation. With pH controlled to 6.7 and temperatures around 70 C, you will still start generating hypochlorite, but then the hypochlorite will automatically disproportionate to produce chlorate (a more efficient reaction). This is one step of anodic oxidation and one step which is purely thermally driven. I have another video on chlorate cells which goes deeper into the chemistry here: ua-cam.com/video/CqMEnrQb5q8/v-deo.html
Glad you enjoyed! I'm not actually aware of any reasonably easy methods of measuring the purity of the chlorate (if you're aware of any, let me know!). However, given the flat nature of the sodium chloride solubility curve, we can be confident that the process of crystallising the product by cooling the solution will be extremely selective for separating out the chlorate. Seeing as we did two stages of this crystallisation, the final yield should have very minimal chloride content (though to completely eliminate it, I'll probably do one or two more recrystallisations...).
i have a question. what is the difference between naclo3 and kclo3? i've heard that sodium is a bit less reactive and unstable. i want to use sodium chlorate for flas powder but i am a bit scared that it wouldn't be good enough (to sensitive to explosion) and probably to weak. the problem is that potassium chlorate is way too expensive compared to sodium. do you have any idea to help me with? thanks@@ScrapScience
Hi! I have a question. Can you use this in low concentrations (0.01-0.1% by weight) for home cleaning? Can it replace Na-hypochlorite in that sense? Does it decay into NaClO2 and so forth, down until NaCl?
Yep! In fact, if you just leave the cell running for a couple of minutes, it generally makes enough sodium hypochlorite for cleaning things. There's no need to electrolyse all the way to make chlorate. A lot of companies actually sell cells like this for that very purpose (look up 'sodium hypochlorite generator' and you'll find many).
@@ScrapScience one more thing, can you be more elaborate with the cathodes in a hypochlorite cell? Does steel do a good job in that case. Also would a carbon anode contaminate it or does it only happen with chlorate cells. Or do the same rules apply with chlorate cells regarding the materials?
The electrode choices for a hypochlorite cell are exactly the same as for a chlorate cell, seeing as the two are technically the same thing anyway. Steel will do a perfectly good job as a cathode material in both cases, but you're correct on the fact that a carbon anode will slowly fill your solution with carbon dust contamination.
Technically, yes from a chemical perspective, but 12 volts is far too much for this kind of process. Most energy will be dissipated as heat (making your cell extremely hot), and the combination of high temperatures and high current density will likely destroy your anode very quickly.
A steel anode will not work to generate chlorate I'm afraid. The only viable anode choices that will give you a meaningful yield in this process are platinum, graphite, and 'mixed metal oxide' (which I use here). Using pretty much any other commonly available material as an anode will result in the oxidation of the electrode instead of the generation of chlorate.
@@ScrapScience Thank you, dear brother, for your cooperation with me, and I need you to answer my question: How much time do I need to convert 100 grams of sodium chloride into sodium chlorate using graphite electrodes and mobile charger.
In the case of having an equal stoichiometric amount of sodium chloride and sodium chlorate in solution, you're completely correct that chloride would crystallise first if you boiled down the solution or cooled down a saturated mixture. However, we didn't have equal amounts of each in solution. We had a little bit of the chloride and a LOT of the chlorate. In this case here, we could rely on the difference in solubility curves between the two salts (which you can find here: shorturl.at/rOR48 ) to get our crystallisation to work. When crystallising, we aimed to boil down the solution (reducing its volume) to the point just before the chloride crystallised. At this point, we stopped heating the solution and allowed it to cool. The solubility of chloride is almost independent of temperature, as you will see from the linked graph, so none crystallised on cooling. However, the chlorate solubility sharply decreased with cooling, so since we had so much in solution, we forced the chlorate to drop out even though it's more soluble. Boiling alone won't give you the chlorate, but if you stop boiling at the right time, you can just crystallise the chlorate by taking advantage of the temperature solubility curves.
+Scrap Science By the way how can you tell chlorate and perchlorate apart? They are quite similar and probably you wouldn´t know at which point you´re converting chlorates into perchlorates during electrolysis.
Mixed metal oxide and carbon electrodes will only convert chloride to chlorate, and will not make any appreciable amount of perchlorate, so this isn't an issue for this type of cell. When using platinum or lead dioxide (which are able to make perchlorate), it still isn't too big of an issue. The presence of the initial chloride in the cell diminishes the efficiency of making perchlorate to a large extent, so you generally don't generate any unless you allow the cell to continue running for a very long time. If you were to run the cell for that long (which will ruin the electrodes to a large extent), the conversion to perchlorate is also accompanied by a sharp increase in voltage, so it's easy to spot when it starts.
This video is about making sodium chlorate from sodium chloride. I have another video about making potassium chlorate from potassium chloride, which is linked in the description. If it's ever difficult to understand what I'm saying, subtitles should also be available for this video.
This is rather complicated to explain in a single UA-cam comment, but I'll give it a try. In the case of having an equal stoichiometric amount of sodium chloride and sodium chlorate in solution, you're completely correct that chloride would crystallise if you boiled down the solution or cooled down a saturated mixture. However, we didn't have equal amounts of each in solution. We had a little bit of the chloride and a LOT of the chlorate. In this case here, we could rely on the difference in solubility curves between the two salts (which you can find online) to get our crystallisation to work. When crystallising, we aimed to boil down the solution (reducing its volume) to the point just before the chloride crystallised. At this point, we stopped heating the solution and allowed it to cool. The solubility of chloride is almost independent of temperature, as you will see from the solubility curves, so none crystallised on cooling. However, the chlorate solubility sharply decreased with cooling, so since we had so much in solution, we forced the chlorate to drop out even though it's more soluble. Boiling alone won't give you the chlorate, but if you stop boiling at the right time, you can just crystallise the chlorate by taking advantage of the temperature solubility curves.
@@ScrapScience is it maybe because you put NaCl in water ,electrolyze it and then the water forms chlorate and because it has gained mass from the oxygen in the hydroxide it is more . If you get what i mean
Sodium chlorate has a much steeper solubility curve than sodium chloride. So, by allowing a concentrated solution of the two salts to cool down from 100 C, only the chlorate will crystallise out with the decrease in solubility. The solubility of sodium chloride almost doesn't change at all with temperature, so it doesn't crystallise out until you reduce the volume drastically.
Recomendaría que utilizes percarbonato de sodio, es un oxidante y a demás es alcalino, ayudaría con el cloro al inicio de la electrolisis y también en la eficiencia, es barato y fácil de encontrar.
@@ScrapScience realmente es una suposición, olvide colocar "podría ayudar". La razón de que suponga esto es que el percarbonato de sodio (según mi opinión) es algo parecido al persulfato de sodio qué han mencionado en los comentarios, entonces, supuse que al ser parecidos y el percarbonato además es alcalino podría mejorar esto. Pero, ahora pensándolo bien, creo que el peróxido de hidrógeno liberado por el percarbonato se descompone en estas condiciones
@@jorgetrigueros9070 I tried it but not really effective, carbon is not wellcome I suppose....and alcalin solution not a lot. For good electrolyse PH must be around 6.5, so chloridric acid needed. Try it and tell us please.
I created a cell of anode (positive) mmo, and cathode (negative) titanium, each of them are 5 cm * 15 cm, in a cell consisting of 2 liters of water added to them 200 grams of sodium chloride and I ran the cell on 5 volts and 20 amperes Within 24 hours, some rust appeared in the solution, and the titanium electrode turned black, taking into account that the temperature was maintained between 60 to 80 degrees. What went wrong? please help me please
Your current density might be too high. The plates should be oriented parallel to each other to avoid the current concentrating on any small spot on the anode. Excess current can eat the mmo protective layer.
Also, titanium is not necessary as a cathode. Use a piece of stainless steel. It has some chromium in it that will erode out and serves to protect the anode as well as makes the reaction move forward.
It's very difficult to explain the basics of this kind of calculation in a UA-cam comment, so I'll direct you towards a website that gives good explanations on how to make predictions of the cell runtime and production rate: www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html
The runtime of the cell will depend on many factors, including: - The size of the cell - The current - The anode/cathode choice - The current density on the anode/cathode - The temperature of the cell It's not really something that has a simple answer, and a single UA-cam comment is not enough space to explain how all of these factors influence the runtime. I'm afraid you'll likely need to do some research to get a complete answer.
I'm afraid not. Electrolysis of ammonium chloride results in the generation of highly reactive nitrogen species, none of which I'd like to be around (nitrogen trichloride for instance). Definitely something to avoid in my opinion. Ammonium ions should definitely be kept away from this procedure at all times.
Nope, stainless steel is only usable as a cathode. For the anode, you need to use either graphite, platinum (with an optional titanium substrate), or MMO electrodes.
Temperature has minimal effect on a cell that isn't pH controlled. Chlorate is produced regardless of temperature under these conditions - NaOH is only ever a minor constituent in solution. If you'd like a complete description of the chemistry going on here, you can find it in my other video on chlorate cells: ua-cam.com/video/CqMEnrQb5q8/v-deo.html
It only takes a couple of minutes for the hydroxide concentration to build up to the point where chlorine is retained, so I wouldn't worry about it honestly. Also, doing this makes it somewhat difficult to prevent overshooting the pH. Even just adding an extra half of a gram of NaOH to a cell of this size would push the pH way above the ideal value of 9-10, and possibly damage the anode with the strongly basic conditions. You can definitely do it if you want to minimise the chlorine generated at the start of the cell run, but be careful of overshooting the amount of hydroxide.
I always used to get my electrodes from electrodesupply.com/ - and this is the site I always recommended because I can guarantee that the electrodes sold here are genuine. However, they no longer list any products on their website. Maybe they've shut down or something, but it might be a good idea to keep an eye on them to see if they come back. With this source gone, I can't link you to any other suppliers of electrodes where I can guarantee the authenticity of the products, sorry. Generally, titanium and MMO electrodes are unlikely to be fake. Titanium is a cheap metal so there is little incentive to make a fake product, and MMO electrodes are easily recongisable for the black coating on the electrode surface, making them difficult to fake. Platinum is a different story, and I would say the vast majority of online listings for platinum electrodes are certainly fake. With caution, I'll point you to this link: tinyurl.com/fhtcu4cv - These look like genuine MMO electrodes to me, though again, I can't make any guarantees because I've never bought from them before.
This exact procedure can be followed with the use of graphite anodes instead of MMO if you need. The only extra thing you'll have to do is filter the resulting graphite particles out of solution before you crystallise out your product.
@@slimani373 They work, but they fall apart even faster than plain carbon/graphite, because they are technically a mixture of graphite and clay. Adding a fine filter during the electrolysis might work, but the filter itself might start acting as a diaphragm and preventing hydroxide ions from properly migrating towards the anode. Why not just filter the solution after it's finished? It will achieve the same effect as far as purification is concerned.
For anodes mmo or platinum work great lead oxide can work but it's toxic and carbon works but then you need to remove all the carbon particles.. Don't use ebay "platinum" anodes because their fake and don't work.. for cathodes titanium or carbon are normally used
The anodes you can use for this cell are exactly the same as the ones you can use for a potassium chlorate cell. If you don't want to use MMO, platinum, or MnO2 electrodes, your only other options are lead dioxide (which MUST be plated onto graphite or titanium, NOT just anodised lead metal), or bare graphite. There aren't any other viable anodes which will work here. I'd recommend just using graphite if that's all you can get. As Mark has said above, they'll fill your solution with graphite particles which will need filtering, but then you won't have to deal with the difficult and toxic process of making lead dioxide anodes. You can use whatever you want for a cathode (excluding reactive metals like aluminium or zinc). Iron and titanium are generally best.
After filtering the graphite particles and crystallising your product, it might still have a slight grey colour from the graphite you weren't able to remove. This won't cause any problems for most uses though.
The power supply I'm using here is a combination of an old ATX power supply from an unwanted desktop computer, and a buck-boost converter with controllable voltage/current that I got on Ebay for about $15.
I used an old ATX power supply from an unwanted desktop computer, coupled with a $15 buck-boost converter (with controllable current/voltage) from Ebay.
You can make it into perchlorate using the positive plates from an old lead acid battery. Make sure the plate is fully formed then leach the sulfuric acid out with baking soda water. Then soak in distilled water, then use some salt water. The cathode material really can be anything you like. 🤓
Can you make Sodium Chlorate from lead, then adding salt to water and H2SO4 then electrosis, and can you make explosive with this for replacing Potasium Chlorate?
These videos never get old
I needed this information, Thank you. Was having issues with the time scale, didn't realize it was weeks. Kept wondering why nothing after 4 or 5 days. Thanks again.
Fun fact, you can easisy remove the iodine by dry heating the salt in a oven or even a pan. Also, to remove anti caking agents, you can dissolve the whole pack in water to make a saturated or near saturated solution and then filter through a coffee filter. Then, you can boil/evaporate the water to get pretty pure NaCl.
Nice
Hi i need a better explanation please 🙏 😊
NaI is harmless in this rea anyway
I think dishwasher salt is even purer without any anti-caking agents, come in bigger crystals though so takes longer to dissolve. Also if you haven't run the cell to completely use all of the chloride then I think your product will contain a level of chloride in it as chloride drops out first.
but at the end of the cell's run the chloride levels are really low so it doesn't participate out much
Pool salt is the most straightforward. And cheap as hell.
Maybe I have an idea for an advanced Setup. Therefore you would need a second bottle, that serves as a reservoir for fresh NaCl.
What is further needed, is a small heater, under this NaCl-reservoir, to prevent the NaClO3 from cristalizing out in that bottle.
Few Watts eg. from a tiny peltier module, that (maybe) should be electronically adjustable, should do the job, if placed on the bottom of the flask, right below the NaCl. And aditionally you would need a tiny and cheap peristaltic pump (that can not be effected by corrosive agents, because it does not come in direct contact), could be used to mix and pump the liquid around very slowly between the both bottles. What I expect is, that from a point on, the NaClO3 would continously cristalize out in the coldest part of the system, while the solution is getting continously freshed up with new NaCl from the second Bottle. I didn't test it, but if that works, it would be a very comfortable way to produce NaClO3 crystals without too much work , as the NaCl can get filled up any time and also the crude NaClO3-crystals could just get sieved out. That would be a nice micro production unit, especially good, if you could power it with a solarmodul, to turn sun energy into an useful oxidizer for almost nothing.
How ı do chlorate? You have Instagram? I have a question please
Please don't feel demotivated. Your videos are very educational and are even better than Nile red's. Soon you will get more views, likes and subscribers
@Lázár🏳️🌈⃠ ... Nile red likes to put on a show 😂 he is in if for the money, he only uploads when he wants to and his chemistry is expensive and inaccessible for most people.
For learning and chemistry on a budget this is the best chanel online! No adverts and self promotion ❤
@@Jawstdon’t think it is for the money because he started at his parents garage and the got his dream fume hoodes setup and he pays rent for it, and from time to time he goes back to his parents garage for fun
I DONT THINK IT IS A GOOD IDEA TO COMPARE THE CHANNELS BECAUSE NILE RED CAN DO A LOT OF SOLUTIONS AND ELEMENTS HE CANNOT DO but it is still a really good channel but not as good as nile red
Edit: srry dictation mistake
@@Jawstyoure wrong, just wrong. If he was in for the money he would pump out more videos
Both are awesome
Scrap Science is amateur accesible while nile red is fun to watch for the chemistry behind it, even tho it might not be accesible for the amateur
I personally find myself rewatching scrapscience, nurdrage, thy's videos many times! they are great
and that chemist has confirmed they actually are in some sort of network lmao
He is doing only stupid shit and faking the results. Don’t motivate this retardaned person…
Nice video. Now you need to make a theoretical/historical video explaining just how the electrodes were developed. Ruthenium and iridium dioxide? There must be a story there.
Very nice sodium chlorate cell. Very helpful.👩🔬👩🔬
2:18 If you don't have this salt, you can use sea water and cook until all the water evaporates and you have cooking salt
Evaporated seawater contains about 50% of NaCl, so it would be very impure
@@foxpaw474official5I use salt from sea water and it still works fine
Would love to see you put out the perchlorate video. Your KClO3 video was a great guide. I've got a good yield and would like to take a stab at KClO4. There is def room for a good guide on the subject.
I'm slowly building up to it, haha. I keep putting it off because I feel like I need to learn more about perchlorate cells before I actually build one.
Additionally, given the size of my channel now, I think it's possible that any video I make on perchlorate cells might become one of the most widespread of its kind on UA-cam (that's not saying much - there are just so few videos about perchlorate cells here...), so I think it really needs to be a very well-researched production.
It'll come eventually!
@@ScrapScienceplease make a perchlorate cell soon 🙏 there is so little information on youtube and i dont know wich anodes to use how to destroy the remaining chlorate and i think your video could help me qnd other hobby chemists
Am very excited to see the perchlorate cell!
you need to load in a lot of sodium chlorate to do a perchlorate cell.
I usually make the electrodes for it myself by careful electrodeposition of lead salts on coated Ti.
I've always wondered about these deposited PbO2 anodes. Doesn't something simpler work? Like anodizing some lead in sulfuric acid or copper sulfate or whatever. Make them nice and black with oxide. Or is that too thin?
Interesting... maybe I'll need to make some more at some point then.
And yes! I'm a fan of your work on PbO2 anodes. It's a little beyond what I can manage myself, but it's very impressive to watch nonetheless.
@@6alecapristrudel that will not work because you need either a nonporous or thick mesoporous PbO2 deposite which can only be done with careful electrodeposition.
It also needs careful control of the plating current density and bath temperature to make a good enough anode for long term use.
@@CatboyChemicalSociety Ok fair enough. I was just wondering since it seemed so easy lol.
I managed to make a PbO2 rod as thick as my pinky finger once by accident. I was making some acid from CuSO4 with this thick rod of solder as anode. It was holding up nicely, but after I plated out the copper I saw that I was leaching tin out of the anode.
So I kept going. I got over 20g of tin out of the solder without it changing shape at all. I assume what was left in the rod is some sort of porous PbO2. It was noticeably lighter and cracked instead of bending. Not sure what alloy it was since 60/40 doesn't really leach tin IME. Higher tin content probably.
@@6alecapristrudel indeed its fine in an environment containing SO4 ions because the Pb2+ species is not very mobile in this liquid due to insolubility of PbSO4 and thus the anode will not corrode and instead oxidize to PbO2.
but in electrolytes containing chloride/chlorate the ions will be more mobile which will cause them to migrate to the cathode and plate out lead metal.
This also causes the anode structure to corrode if the liquid reaches the lead layer but while this process can be halted at pH of 9 it still will occur enough to create these stalactites of PbO2 due to this effect which still corrodes the substrate.
Ok so what is the difference between this and the Chlor alkali process
They both involve the electrolysis of saltwater but it forms sodium hydroxide instead of chlorate
A chlorate cell is (from a technical perspective, at least) extremely simple - electrolysis of a choride solution with inert electrodes. A chloralkali cell, on the other hand, requires a separator between the anode and cathode, to ensure that the products on each electrode are kept separate.
In a chlorate cell, the cathode generates hydrogen and hydroxide ions. The anode will oxidise chloride ions, and with the hydroxide ions freely available to interact with the anode (no separator between the electrodes), this oxidation of chloride in the presence of hydroxide will yield hypochlorite ions. These hypochlorite ions can eventually be oxidised again by the anode to form chlorate ions.
In a chloralkali cell, the cathode once again generates hydrogen and hydroxide ions. However, due to the separation of the cathode and the anode (with a porous diaphragm or an ion exchange membrane), the oxidation of chloride ions on the anode is not performed in the presence of the hydroxide ions, leading to the oxidation product of chlorine gas instead. Overall, the anode will make chlorine gas in this setup, whilst sodium hydroxide will accumulate around the cathode.
21:19 naclo3 has higher deflegration/detonation temperatures with oxidant-fuel admixtures compared to the potassium salt. Which is why it's brighter. As far as power, there are regards in which one is more powerful than the other depending on the circumstances. Overall they are equal but not identical. As far as what's on paper, kclo3 has an oxygen balance of +39.2, whereas naclo3 is +45. That doesn't necessarily mean as much as it seems, considering that nano3 has higher OB than the both of them but is far weaker in most regards.
i don't mean to be an ass but man the way you write the formulas pains me deeply.
Sodium chlorate is more explosive ..tho
@@impatientpatient8270 considering I see people on yt write it as "KC103" all the time it could be worse
@@dc-gs3ld what a cursed piece of text
Which is better in combination with diesel if you know what I mean…
finally, i just found this chanel and this guy is awesome
This is a really good video. Thank you for sharing.
So this will probably be the last 5 questions i will ask about this video , 1 being : i have got a glass jar witch will be suitable for my cell but i need a lid that can resist chlorine gas , my lid has got a white coating at the inner part and its metal
But i want to know if it will not dissolve or corrode . Question : What material or lid did you use?
Question 2 : will any ATX power supply do and does it need to have a specific amperage and what section of the power supply did you use (i think you used the input to the motherboard but just to be sure) .
Question 3 : i need to know how much salt i need to add around the course of 20 days
Question 4: i have some fiber glass sheet laying around, but with filtering out the hypochlorates, must it be fiber or can i use a small sheet in the funnel.
Question 5 : How did you crystalise / dry the crystals because you did not film this in your video 🤔.
I hope you will react to this comment.
No worries! Answers are as follows:
1) If it's the type of jar I'm thinking of, the white coating is not enough to stop the lid from being attacked by the chlorine and oxidising solution. You need a jar with a plastic lid if you want to avoid corrosion. The jars I use in my own chlorate cell videos have a thick (~5mm) plastic disc underneath the metal that is capable of protecting it. I found them in a garage sale and I've actually been unable to find anything else like them...
2) Most ATX power supplies will provide appropriate current for any moderately sized chlorate cell. I've never seen one that would be inadequate for the task. For my own cells, I used the 12 volt output hooked up to a buck converter to give me controllable voltage and current. The exact current you need will depend on the surface area of your electrodes, the size of your cell, and your personal preference.
3) That will depend on the size of your cell and how much chlorate you want. This isn't really something that can be explained in a UA-cam comment alone, so you'll need an understanding of stoichiometry to do these calculations. As a starting point, this website gives an overview of runtime for a certain quantity of starting chloride material:
www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html
4) Is the fibreglass sheet fibrous or solid? As long as liquid can flow through it, it should work. You just want to use it as a filtering medium.
5) I talk about the crystallising and drying stages from 14:03 to 17:50. In particular, I show my method of drying the crystals at 17:01.
Hope that helps!
Thank you so much , i will not bother you again about this matter and i will mention you in the description & video 😊@@ScrapScience
In case I can't find platinum, is it possible to use stainless steel 316, I hope to find an answer.
Stainless steel will not work for this process when used as an anode. The only easily-purchased anode choices are platinum, MMO (as I've used in this video), and graphite/carbon electrodes. I go into this in more detail in my other video on chlorate cells (link in the description).
My friend, if you leave the sodium chlorate cell for a long time, even after the chlorate is formed, and then continue the electrolysis, can the sodium chlorate turn into sodium perchlorate?
It depends on the electrodes you're using. Generally, no.
вообще-то самый простой способ получить -ClO3,это пропускание хлора в ГОРЯЧИЙ раствор щёлочи Na,KOH.Поэтому можно было бы вести электролиз горячего раствора.Положительный электрод ,положить на дно,чтобы выделяющийся хлор как можно дольше находился в растворе, и вверху высокого сосуда встречался со щелочью и отрицательным электродом.Выход больше.А угольные электроды для этого не подойдут?(rus)
Can the sodium chlorate decompose when it is boiling too hot? And what happens if it is boiled inside a metal pot? Mine turned a bit yellow, so i put it back into the cell because i am suspecting it decomposed again
Boiling the solution definitely won't decompose the sodium chlorate, so there are no worries there. However, a metal pot probably isn't the best, as it might be oxidised by the chlorate. Boiling it in glassware is the best way to go.
It's probably not really necessary to put it back in the cell, since you're not really seeing decomposition here.
Dude I love this shit I love how u do it on the home dyi type like following your directions I think I could pull this off. You got yourself a sub brother.
Brother, I do not know why the electrolysis process does not work for me. I do electrolysis of a salt solution for two days, the amount of water is ٨٠ ml, but all I get is sodium hypochlorite only and with a very strong concentration. Sodium chlorate will crystallize within ١٠ hours, especially with this amount of water that I use. Please describe the problem to me, my brother. Thank you.
Unless you are constantly adding sodium chloride to the cell, sodium chlorate will never crystallise from solution. The chlorate is more soluble than the chloride. Additionally, what electrodes are you using and what current are you running things at? The current will determine your reaction speed.
I was thinking exactly the same about your leftover Nacl salt into the cell, but what happened to me was at some point, the electrolyte was concentrated with Naclo3 that didn't want to ppt out, and at the bottom of the cell there was a bunch of undissolved Nacl salt. Any idea why that happened ?
My dear friend, thank you for your effort, but please, I have a question that concerns me very much, and I hope you can answer it. My cell operates with an appropriate current, and even the amount of gases generated by the electrodes is normal, but with the passage of two days of not adding more chloride to the cell, the amount of gases increases in large quantities. Is this a result of the decrease in chloride in the cell, or what?
Are you constantly measuring current? Has the current increased or is this extra gas generation occurring at the same current as before?
@@ScrapScience No, the current and voltage themselves did not increase anything, and as for the electrodes, I use carbon electrodes, and as another note? When I want to extract sodium chlorate from the solution, I do not evaporate half the amount of water because the crystallization process does not work for me, meaning the chlorate does not crystallize at the bottom. No matter how much I evaporate half the amount of water and leave it to cool, I do not find any chlorate crystallization. Instead, I evaporate all of the water until only salt remains. Is this the case? It is true, and even if it is true, how do I separate chloride from chlorate after the total evaporation process?
An increase in gas formation still sounds most likely to be from the cell drawing more current as it increases in temperature (this is common for cells that are supplied with a fixed voltage). However, if you're directly measuring current and confirming that it is not changing, it's a possibility that you've begun generating more oxygen as the choride level drops, though this is still a very strange situation.
If you're unable to crystallise chlorate out of the cell upon volume reduction, you probably just haven't made enough. Do diagnose this properly, I'm going to need to know a lot more about your cell:
How big is your cell (in mL)?
How much current has it been drawing?
How long did you run the cell for?
How much chloride did you add? And in what intervals?
Did you include other additives?
What are the surface areas of your electrodes?
To answer your final question, simply boiling down the cell solution to dryness will give you your chlorate. However, it will definitely be contaminated with significant chloride impurity (as you've suspected), and will need a recrystallisation if you want a pure product.
What do you actually need the chlorate for? It's possible a potassium chlorate cell would be more appropriate for your needs...
What would happen if you just used a large iron or mild steel bar as the anode? Sure it would oxidize rapidly but couldn’t you use a magnet to clean the solution, instead of having to use expensive inert electrodes ?
The problem isn't inherently the oxidation, because as you've noted, it's possible to remove oxides from solutions. The real issue is the fact that the oxidation of the anode will completely replace the desired reaction of forming chlorate ions. The oxidation of iron (or any other standard metal for that matter) is an easier reaction than the oxidation of chloride to chlorate, so all the energy you put into the cell will go towards destroying your anode, and virtually none will go towards the reaction you want.
Yet graphite also breaks down, albeit much more slowly, what reaction is going on there, and does it dominate ?
Yep, graphite does also break down. This is mostly due to an extremely small degree of oxidation on the graphite structure (a few small sections are oxidised to CO2, breaking apart the surface of the graphite material).
In contrast to the reactions that occur on iron, nickel, copper, or any other standard metal, the oxidation of graphite is an extremely minor reaction, allowing most of the input energy to go towards chlorate generation.
Hey way late, but why is it that the chlorate precipitates out first before the chloride? The chlorate has a solubility of 106g/100ml and the chloride is only 36g/100ml. So shouldn't the chloride precipitate first?
Generally, yes. Chloride should precipitate first if you increase the concentration of both.
However, in this case, we don't just have a mixture of the chloride and chlorate - the cell is actively converting the former into the latter. At the beginning of the run, we have a saturated solution of chloride, and we then start turning this into chlorate. As we do this conversion, we physically add more and more chloride to the cell to account for the amount we're converting, keeping the chloride concentration close to the saturation limit. Repeating this process for a while keeps the chloride levels relatively constant (not enough to start crystallising out), while the chlorate concentration steadily increases. Eventually, after enough chloride addition and enough electrolytic oxidation, we have such an excess of chlorate in solution (>100g/100mL) that it must start crystallising out.
That's the basic idea anyway. It gets a little more complicated when you have to take solubility products into account.
@@ScrapScience Thank you, that makes sense, but if I did a recrystallisation by dissolving the product in the water and boiling it should I expect the chloride to now precipitate out first since the concentration would now be increasing for both? Or will the chlorate still precipitate first because of the solubility curve.
Edit: also to add, wouldn’t it be better to not boil down your final solution and instead just keep topping it off with the chloride, decant the top and take the crystals? So instead of taking 2 weeks for you to start getting the chlorate you just add some chloride to the super concentrated chlorate solution and get some more on demand?
For your first point:
Yeah, if you crystallise exclusively by boiling down a mixture of sodium chloride and chlorate, you'll get the chloride crystallising out first. However, the difference in solubility curves is extremely useful if you don't quite crystallise out any chloride in the boiling step. If you manage to boil down the solution to the point just before the chloride crystallises, you can stop there and allow the solution to cool. The solubility of chloride is almost independent of temperature, so none will crystallise on cooling. However, the chlorate solubility sharply decreases with cooling, so you force the chlorate to drop out.
Again (to summarise that lengthy explanation), boiling alone won't give you the chlorate, but if you stop boiling at the right time, you can just crystallise the chlorate by taking advantage of the solubility curves (as you're referring to in that last sentence).
For your edit:
Are you talking about doing future runs of the chlorate cell? In that case, yes, the final decanted solution from this cell would be an ideal starting solution to make a new chlorate cell. It's already saturated in chlorates and ready to go for more electrolysis.
Good video! It is not clear to me for 14 minutes when you filter through a funnel into a larger container. Do you filter everything into a bowl and bring to a boil? Full content?
At that point in the video, I'm just filtering everything, and then placing the filtered solution back into the original beaker to be further boiled down. You've got the correct idea here.
Q: can I continue with same process to oxidize NaClO3 to NaClO4 ??
Only with very pure chlorate, the correct electrodes (MMO anodes will not work), and an additive to prevent back-reduction. I'll eventually make a video about this.
@@ScrapScience Thank you, I hope you make that video
Would it work as well if you'd had platinum plated titanium electrodes for anode and for cathode?
Yep, that'd work!
Subscribed. I really like what I've seen. Very informative.
Hello brother, I have a question, how can I add sodium chloride to the cell? Do I add it in the form of a fine powder or make it dissolve in water? It was added 👍👍👍
Either way is fine, though adding a solution is generally a better option.
fantastic video, love it. Can't believe I haven't heard about this stuff sooner. I'm thinking about using carbon rods as my electrodes, how do I go about filtering their particles from the solution? It isn't a particularly big issue since I'm planning to use it for pyrotechnics anyway, but I also would like find the most efficient ratio of oxidizer to fuel and a precontamination would make that a lot less precise.
Filtering is a little tricky since the oxidising solution tends to eat through paper. If you're careful and don't apply too much pressure to the filter, you can probably still get away with using paper towel or a coffee filter though.
Note that the use of carbon will probably make your chlorate yellow even after filtering, but the contamination is generally extremely minor despite the strong colour.
@@ScrapScience thanks mate, sounds good.
First let it settle for a day or so and decant it, to get rid of most carbon particles and after that, I would press a cigarette filter into a tubing, so that it's sealed up with the walls and pump the solution through it. That should be good enough to get it clear again.
@@ralfvk.4571
Thanks for all the tips!
Decanting worked well enough (the solution had been settling for weeks, I've been too busy lately to take care of it earlier sadly). I just filtered the rest through a coffee filter, which worked well enough to get rid of the particulates at least.
Sadly, I'll never know how much chlorate I had in solution; as I was boiling it, the ""heat proof"" glass I was using shattered and spilled the solution everywhere. lmao.
I'll try again soon (I have a much bigger and higher amperage setup prepared), and maybe attempt that cigarette filter trick. not sure yet.
As a poor people i can aproof that i make Sodium Chlorate from Lead or Battery rod then add mixture salt and H2SO4 then electrosys.
12 volt 1.5 amp need hour electroliz or day ??
That’s an extremely broad question.
First of all, 12 volts is way too high for this process. A current-controlled supply is ideal, and standard cells will probably require 3-5 volts for a reasonable current draw.
The runtime of the cell will depend on many factors, including:
- The size of the cell
- The set current
- The desired quantity of chlorate
- The anode/cathode choice
- The current density on the anode/cathode
- The temperature of the cell
- The pH control
For any given cell, you can calculate the theoretical production rate. This requires some understanding of stoichiometry and how charge transfer relates to current, and isn’t something I can explain in a single UA-cam comment. You’ll need to do some research here if this type of calculation isn’t familiar to you.
@@ScrapScience I am wondering about 5% or 1 liter water 1% rate of naclo production, do you have any information about what are the required rates?
I don't understand your question here. What are the percentages and volumes referring to? And what do you mean by rates?
@@ScrapScience do you know the production of sodium hypochlorite me 5% or 1% concentrate with electric
Okay, so we're talking about hypochlorite.
Designing your own system is pretty useless in my opinion. You can buy hypochlorite generators for like $10 online.
Does Sodium chlorate have the same anti bacterial effect as potassium chlorate? We used Potassium chlorate for strep throat as a gargle. Can sodium chlorate work as well? What about wound wash?
No clue. Sorry.
I'd never even heard of potassium chlorate's use as such before now.
Thanks video
Once question. How do you remove H2 gas during electrolytic sodium chloride process? That means - I want to take Cl2 gas?
The decanting, washing and drying sequence after crystallization is missing (16:21). It would have been very useful to observe and understand how the pure crystals that we see in the bags are obtained.
To concentrate the NaClO3 from bleach, after boiling and evaporation, I crystallize the evaporated solution up to 1/3 remaining in a porcelain or Pyrex or Arcopal plate by reducing the temperature gradually, so as not to remix the salt with chlorate due to bubbles. I obtain a crust composed overall of 1/3 chlorate, slightly different in color from salt and very hard. The NaClO3 being below due to its late crystallization. I cook this crust and after cooling, I scrape and brush as much salt as possible to release the chlorate. I make pieces of it and quickly soak them in cold water to remove the remaining salt stuck to them. Then I dry the pieces a lot with concentrated chlorate.
The removed salt can be treated in the same way to recover some NaClO3.
Best exclusive explanation
i used aluminium anodes for a quick hho generator experiment, it generates gas as expected but rapidly produces aluminium oxide in the bottle, which is not desired
Did you re dry the potassium chlorate before the test?
The sodium chlorate was newer and like you said their both highly hydroscopic.
Yeah, I didn't re-dry the potassium salt before the test, that might be it.
However, the potassium salt isn't actually hygroscopic, it's just the sodium salt in that regard, so it shouldn't have mattered anyway... Maybe I just didn't dry it well enough to begin with.
@@ScrapScience IDK I'm not much of a chemist, honestly just hoping I say something insightful.
Trong thí nghiệm điện phân muối ăn ( NaCl ) này , điện cực trơ được anh dùng là Platin ( Pt ) hay bằng chất gì vậy ?
The inert anode in this case is a mixed metal oxide (MMO) anode - also known as a dimensionally stable anode (DSA). It is a titanium substrate coated with a mixture of ruthenium dioxide and iridium dioxide.
Platinium also works. So does graphite.
Love pink flames from potassium.
Hello! Your videos are very good! Can other metals be used? For example stainless steel or can you say something else?
For the cathode, many metals can be used (titanium, stainless steel, mild steel, and nickel can all be good options).
For the anode, stainless steel definitely won't work, and you are severely limited in your choice of anode material. The only reasonable choices here are platinum, graphite, or the mixed metal oxide I use in this video. Basically every other metal will oxidise, fall apart, and leave you with zero chlorate product. I talk about this in a little bit more detail in my other video on chlorate cells, which you can find in the description here.
Thank you very much for your answer!
Please, my brother, I have a question, does it hurt when electrolysis starts, i.e. crosswise, does it hurt? Please respond, thank you
I don’t understand your question at all.
Your videos a filled w good info. Keep going for us
Hard to calculate solubility products when a fairly unpredictable ammount water is disappearing into electrolysis ?
Hello, I'm planning to make nacl03 in the same way as in the video, maybe I'll use 500 grams of salt and use carbon electrodes from a size D battery,Please give me advice, what voltage and current to use? how much water is needed? And how long does it take for electrolysis?
If you want to know about the basics of the process, you should watch my video on the potassium chlorate cell. It's linked in the description, and goes over most parts of the general process. This particular video is more of a sequel to that one, where the process is modified for the sodium salt.
As for the voltage and current, the general rule is that you should use whatever voltage will give you 20 mA per square centimetre of exposed anode area (for graphite electrodes specifically). If this requires more than 5 volts, you should ignore this rule and keep the supply at a 5 volt potential. A current and voltage controlled power supply is best here, since you can then set the maximum voltage to 5 V, and the maximum current to 20 mA per square centimetre of exposed anode area.
For the amount of water you need, this will depend on how you want to run the cell, and how big you want the cell to be. Do you want a batch process where you will be slowly working through your 500 g of starting material? Or do you want to do everything in one go? The simplest way to go about this is to just use enough water to dissolve everything, and electrolyse from there.
For the runtime, this is a subject too complex to explain in a UA-cam comment. It will rely on the quantity of starting material, the current, and the efficiency of your cell, among other things. You'll have to do some research and some stoichiometric calculations here.
I haven't yet found a good resource for doing these calculations, but this is a relatively good start:
www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html
If you went with those carbon rods from batteries you are probably still running the 500g salt cell 4 months later 😂
How do you prevent residual NaCl?
Also, I think its possibly to first purify the salt through crystallization, but that may still trap some other ions
The more recrystallisations that are performed, the less NaCl will be included in the product. If exceptionally pure chlorate is required, three or four recrystallisations may be needed (though this will also lose product, so it's a tradeoff).
And yes, recrystallisation of the starting salt could be done, but it's not really going to impact the overall process, since most common impurities won't interact through the electrolysis anyway.
I started my chlorate cell 3 days ago. How can I calculate how long it will take me if I'm using 6 amps?
It's a little difficult to explain the basics of this kind of calculation in a UA-cam comment, so I'll direct you towards a website that gives good explanations on how to make predictions of the cell runtime and production rate:
www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html
@@ScrapScience Hmm could there be something wrong there's no chlorate crystalizing even though I pumped the amps to 10 but there's definitely hypochlorite being made
am I just too impatient I checked the calculations and I will use them next time because I don't really remember how much salt I used.
The time things take to crystallise will depend on the volume of the cell, how much salt you initially added, the temperature of the cell, whether or not you're topping up with more salt as you go, and whether you're running a sodium or potassium cell, among other things. Without knowing how much salt you added to begin with (or any of the other factors mentioned above), it's pretty much impossible to predict when you'll get crystals.
If you're running a sodium cell, it will take a long time to get crystals (if you get any at all). Generallym, you'll only get sodium chlorate crystals if you add more chloride than is required for a saturated solution.
If you're running a potassium cell however, the crystals are much easier to get, and will usually come out within a few days of running a cell this size.
@@ScrapScience I added some more salt yesterday. Does the voltage increase when the chloride concentration is decreasing and is it possible that only hypochlorite is being made but not chlorate
And thanks for answering to my questions!
Hello brother, please. I have a question. Is it possible to use iodized salt, because I do not have any other salt?
It's possible. The small amount of iodate content in iodised salt won't affect the process to any large degree. Your final product will likely be contaminated with traces of iodate, but this is unlikely to be a big deal and can be fixed with good recrystallisation techniques.
When i run a sodium chlorate cell the current stays the same and the voltage instead of increasing decreases why is that
On a short timescale, the cell heats up a little due to ohmic resistance. As a result, the conductivity increases and you need less voltage to pass the same amount of current.
If you run the hydrogen and chlorine gas mix through a UV-C chamber or burning the mix in a "chlorine furnace", you can also make hydrochloric acid at the same time as making the chlorite.
A good way to blow yourself to smitherines! Do not have any flame anywhere near the exhaust tube or cell! 💥🙈
What kind of furnace and how much electricity it takes
Mine turns yellow after only a few minutes of running, any idea why is that? Im using stainless steel and graphite electrodes
This may be a difficult problem to diagnose. Which electrode is your cathode and which is your anode? What is your voltage/current? What are you using as the vessel for your reaction? And how are you making your connections to your electrodes?
@ScrapScience graphite is my anode and stainless steel my cathode, I'm using 10v with as much current as my supply can give but I haven't measured it, should be enough because it's a 12v 50a supply. I don't think the 10v should be a problem for the reaction, maybe make it more inefficient. The connection is a wire tightly wound around both the electrodes and the vessel is a glass jar i had. By the way sorry for leaving two comments, I didn't notice it was the same channel, my bad.
Haha - no need to apologise!
With a voltage that high, you won't affect the way that the reaction runs, but you will get a lot of heat in your cell and your anode will degrade very quickly. When graphite disintegrates, you tend to get a yellow colouring in solution (nanoscale particles of graphite seem to have this colour). You might be able to minimise this with a lower voltage - a maximum of 4.5 V is generally ideal. It might be an ugly colour, but it ultimately doesn't affect anything for the reaction, so it's up to you whether you want to minimise it.
Alternatively, the yellow colour could possibly be coming from the stainless steel. If you leave the electrodes sitting in the solution without current running through them, the stainless steel can be attacked by the oxidisers in the mix. Hence, always avoid leaving the electrodes sitting in the cell if you're not applying a voltage.
Hope that helps!
@@ScrapScience thank you for the answer, I have a question that might be a little dumb though, if it generates hypochlorite during the reaction, why isn't hypochlorite solution used from the start? Sodium hypochlorite solution is very easy to get, so I guess that if it isn't used it's for a reason, but I don't know exactly why. Again, sorry if the question is too dumb.
Not a dumb question at all!
You could start with sodium hypochlorite if you wanted. There are two main drawbacks though.
First, it's simply more expensive (per mole) as a starting material. The extra electricity costs associated with using chloride are miniscule in comparison to the extra costs of using hypochlorite.
Next, making feedstock additions to the cell is difficult when using hypochlorite, since it generally comes in solution. When using it, adding more feed into the cell will inherently increase the cell's volume by a lot. This becomes a big problem when you want to make lots of chlorate.
Also, if you're going to start with hypochlorite, you might as well just make the chlorate by boiling a hypochlorite solution instead of going through the electrolysis route.
This video was released at the perfect time possible! Thanks
I mean, if the cell works for some time, for example 13, and stops for an hour, does this harm?
Leaving the electrodes in a chlorate/hypochlorite solution without current flowing through them is generally a very bad idea, since it damages the anode severely.
In I do not add sodium chloride to the cell constantly and I use carbon electrodes for the electric current it is ٤ volts and I use ١٠٠ ml of sodium chloride solution and the cell works with great effort and gases flow in very large quantities the temperature is approximately 25 only the cell becomes warm after running the cell for 5 hours the concentration becomes hypochlorite Sodium is strong, and will it work if I run the cell until the chloride concentration reaches a very low level, then I evaporate the solution until sodium chloride appears, but what are the signs that indicate that the chloride concentration is very low?
There are no reliable signs that will always tell you when the chloride concentration is low. You will need to work this out by calculations involving your expected cell efficiency, quantity of chloride, and cell current. I don't really understand anything else you're asking here, sorry.
Could you please explain why exactly there’s no much chloride left in the output material. I mean why are you so sure the most of the chloride is left in the solution? I’m trying to understand how it works as per idea I have the separation between chloride and chlorate should be bad as chlorate is more soluble so it should kinda tend to stay in solution more than chloride.
I like chemistry but I never fully understood the idea of what you’ve done.
Thanks!
A great question! This is rather complicated to explain in a single UA-cam comment, but I'll give it a try.
In the case of having an equal stoichiometric amount of sodium chloride and sodium chlorate in solution, you're completely correct that chloride would precipitate if you boiled down the solution or cooled down a saturated mixture. However, we didn't have equal amounts of each in solution. We had a little bit of the chloride and a LOT of the chlorate.
In this case here, we could rely on the difference in solubility curves between the two salts (which you can find here: shorturl.at/rOR48 ) to get our crystallisation to work. When crystallising, we aimed to boil down the solution (reducing its volume) to the point just before the chloride crystallised. At this point, we stopped heating the solution and allowed it to cool. The solubility of chloride is almost independent of temperature, as you will see from the linked graph, so none crystallised on cooling. However, the chlorate solubility sharply decreased with cooling, so since we had so much in solution, we forced the chlorate to drop out even though it's more soluble.
Boiling alone won't give you the chlorate, but if you stop boiling at the right time, you can just crystallise the chlorate by taking advantage of the temperature solubility curves.
@@ScrapScience ingenious! Thanks for explaining, this is completely clear to me now!
Do basicly if I use graphite rods
Change them if they corrode
And after it's done I hot filter it to get rid of the carbon particles it should be the same right ?
Yep! That'll do the trick.
It's generally pretty difficult to filter out all of the graphite particles though, and your product might still have a slight colour after you crystallise it. This isn't a problem for most purposes though.
What do you mean by washing with cold water?
After I filtered the crystals, I just rinsed the crystals with ice cold water as they were sitting on the filter paper. This rinsed away any adhered NaCl solution. (The rinsing water needed to be cold to avoid redissolving too much of the product)
@@ScrapScience Ahh ok I understand, makes sense colder the better to an extent. Catching up on terminology lol. Thanks for your response!!
@@ScrapScience little update. Whatever I manage to precipitate or crystalize out of solution, I'm assuming is 25-30% purity. No matter how many times I try to recrystalize, it is contaminated with what I assume is sodium chloride. My starting solution is saturated to the point of recrystalizing the chloride approximately 10°c below ambient temperature (~5°). Is this caused by not enough time under electrolysis, insufficient current/voltage (3.3v @ 2A CC) or starting solution?
A quick question: wouldn't it be easier to simply evaporate the chlorate solution in the sunlight to get the crystals?
Why the extra effort of boiling and crystalization? 🤔
Boiling and recrystallisation is much, much faster than evaporation. I'd definitely consider it the most convenient option, even if it's not technically as easy as evaporation.
How about a video on making strontium chlorate? Exotic stuff.
cant i just use graphite electrodes ?
You can, but your solution (and product) will be filled with microscopic particles of graphite due to the slow erosion of the electrodes. These particles are very difficult to filter out, and will make your chlorate product appear darker. Additionally, the graphite electrodes eventually need replacing.
If you don't mind either of these caveats, graphite electrodes are fine to use for this process.
how about after i finish the electrolysis process using the graphite electrodes i filter the solution using coffee filters then i let it sit for a few days, after that i think the sodium chlorate will cristalis and the left impurities would stay in the solution ???🙂@@ScrapScience with the added bonus that the chlorate would be more than 99% pure at this case
Can you make Sodium Chlorate from lead, then adding salt to water and H2SO4 then electrosis, and can you make explosive with this for replacing Potasium Chlorate?
I don't know what you're talking about here. Are you asking about using lead as an anode material?
there is no bubbles coming through my hose, is that a problem?
It probably means that your cell isn’t completely sealed.
Provided you’re doing this outside with good ventilation (which you definitely should be regardless), it’s not something to worry about too much. I mean, fix the seal if you can, but it’s not a disaster if you’re unable to neutralise the minimal amounts of chlorine generated by the reaction.
I have one question how's the prongs (electrodes) on the cell not short out seeing how u have em going through a metal lid? Just heat shrink the good where they go through the lid?
Yep, you got it. Just a bit of heat shrink around the rods prevents a short.
What the inert electrodes are made of?
MMO and titanium.
I talk about this at 1:21, and go into it more extensively in my video on potassium chlorate cells.
I am using machine translation, so you may not understand exactly what I am saying.
I have a question. The website I referred to says that the temperature of the solution must be high during electrolysis, but do I have to do this?
It also says that hydrochloric acid must be added to make the solution acidic.
You don't need to keep the temperature high or do pH control to build a working cell. Doing these things will increase efficiency (if you perform both techniques), but they are complicated to set up and are definitely not essential.
Does this mean that it is only the concentration of the solution that determines whether the brine becomes sodium hypochlorite or sodium chlorate during electrolysis?
Concentration of your initial chloride doesn't have much to do with it. With no pH control, you will oxidise chloride to hypochlorite, and then when the concentration of hypochlorite gets high enough, you will oxidise it into chlorate. This is two steps of anodic oxidation.
With pH controlled to 6.7 and temperatures around 70 C, you will still start generating hypochlorite, but then the hypochlorite will automatically disproportionate to produce chlorate (a more efficient reaction). This is one step of anodic oxidation and one step which is purely thermally driven.
I have another video on chlorate cells which goes deeper into the chemistry here:
ua-cam.com/video/CqMEnrQb5q8/v-deo.html
I see. Thank you very much.
what is the purity of your chlorate in %? and how do you know there is no sodium chloride (salt) left in your product? btw great video man keep it up!
Glad you enjoyed!
I'm not actually aware of any reasonably easy methods of measuring the purity of the chlorate (if you're aware of any, let me know!). However, given the flat nature of the sodium chloride solubility curve, we can be confident that the process of crystallising the product by cooling the solution will be extremely selective for separating out the chlorate. Seeing as we did two stages of this crystallisation, the final yield should have very minimal chloride content (though to completely eliminate it, I'll probably do one or two more recrystallisations...).
i have a question. what is the difference between naclo3 and kclo3? i've heard that sodium is a bit less reactive and unstable. i want to use sodium chlorate for flas powder but i am a bit scared that it wouldn't be good enough (to sensitive to explosion) and probably to weak. the problem is that potassium chlorate is way too expensive compared to sodium. do you have any idea to help me with? thanks@@ScrapScience
Hi! I have a question. Can you use this in low concentrations (0.01-0.1% by weight) for home cleaning? Can it replace Na-hypochlorite in that sense? Does it decay into NaClO2 and so forth, down until NaCl?
Yep! In fact, if you just leave the cell running for a couple of minutes, it generally makes enough sodium hypochlorite for cleaning things. There's no need to electrolyse all the way to make chlorate.
A lot of companies actually sell cells like this for that very purpose (look up 'sodium hypochlorite generator' and you'll find many).
@@ScrapScience wow, thanks for the info! Gonna check it out
@@ScrapScience one more thing, can you be more elaborate with the cathodes in a hypochlorite cell? Does steel do a good job in that case. Also would a carbon anode contaminate it or does it only happen with chlorate cells. Or do the same rules apply with chlorate cells regarding the materials?
The electrode choices for a hypochlorite cell are exactly the same as for a chlorate cell, seeing as the two are technically the same thing anyway. Steel will do a perfectly good job as a cathode material in both cases, but you're correct on the fact that a carbon anode will slowly fill your solution with carbon dust contamination.
@@ScrapScience much thanks!
Would I get the same result if I used a 12-volt car battery in this reaction?
Technically, yes from a chemical perspective, but 12 volts is far too much for this kind of process. Most energy will be dissipated as heat (making your cell extremely hot), and the combination of high temperatures and high current density will likely destroy your anode very quickly.
It is true that the anode was quickly destroyed, which is a steel nail. I need a way to shorten the time
A steel anode will not work to generate chlorate I'm afraid. The only viable anode choices that will give you a meaningful yield in this process are platinum, graphite, and 'mixed metal oxide' (which I use here).
Using pretty much any other commonly available material as an anode will result in the oxidation of the electrode instead of the generation of chlorate.
@@ScrapScience Thank you very much
@@ScrapScience Thank you, dear brother, for your cooperation with me, and I need you to answer my question: How much time do I need to convert 100 grams of sodium chloride into sodium chlorate using graphite electrodes and mobile charger.
Shouldn't the nacl crystallize first? It has lower solubility. So the naclo3 remains in the solution.
In the case of having an equal stoichiometric amount of sodium chloride and sodium chlorate in solution, you're completely correct that chloride would crystallise first if you boiled down the solution or cooled down a saturated mixture. However, we didn't have equal amounts of each in solution. We had a little bit of the chloride and a LOT of the chlorate.
In this case here, we could rely on the difference in solubility curves between the two salts (which you can find here: shorturl.at/rOR48 ) to get our crystallisation to work. When crystallising, we aimed to boil down the solution (reducing its volume) to the point just before the chloride crystallised. At this point, we stopped heating the solution and allowed it to cool. The solubility of chloride is almost independent of temperature, as you will see from the linked graph, so none crystallised on cooling. However, the chlorate solubility sharply decreased with cooling, so since we had so much in solution, we forced the chlorate to drop out even though it's more soluble.
Boiling alone won't give you the chlorate, but if you stop boiling at the right time, you can just crystallise the chlorate by taking advantage of the temperature solubility curves.
+Scrap Science By the way how can you tell chlorate and perchlorate apart? They are quite similar and probably you wouldn´t know at which point you´re converting chlorates into perchlorates during electrolysis.
Mixed metal oxide and carbon electrodes will only convert chloride to chlorate, and will not make any appreciable amount of perchlorate, so this isn't an issue for this type of cell.
When using platinum or lead dioxide (which are able to make perchlorate), it still isn't too big of an issue. The presence of the initial chloride in the cell diminishes the efficiency of making perchlorate to a large extent, so you generally don't generate any unless you allow the cell to continue running for a very long time. If you were to run the cell for that long (which will ruin the electrodes to a large extent), the conversion to perchlorate is also accompanied by a sharp increase in voltage, so it's easy to spot when it starts.
What water do you put in your cell, plain water or something else?
Yeah just plain water. Distilled or deionised is best.
I didn't catch, make potassium chlorate with potassium chlorate?
This video is about making sodium chlorate from sodium chloride. I have another video about making potassium chlorate from potassium chloride, which is linked in the description.
If it's ever difficult to understand what I'm saying, subtitles should also be available for this video.
@@ScrapScience tank you
Please also produce a film about the production of ammonium persulfate
One day
Wait shouldnt NaCl crystalize out first because of its lower solubility
This is rather complicated to explain in a single UA-cam comment, but I'll give it a try.
In the case of having an equal stoichiometric amount of sodium chloride and sodium chlorate in solution, you're completely correct that chloride would crystallise if you boiled down the solution or cooled down a saturated mixture. However, we didn't have equal amounts of each in solution. We had a little bit of the chloride and a LOT of the chlorate.
In this case here, we could rely on the difference in solubility curves between the two salts (which you can find online) to get our crystallisation to work. When crystallising, we aimed to boil down the solution (reducing its volume) to the point just before the chloride crystallised. At this point, we stopped heating the solution and allowed it to cool. The solubility of chloride is almost independent of temperature, as you will see from the solubility curves, so none crystallised on cooling. However, the chlorate solubility sharply decreased with cooling, so since we had so much in solution, we forced the chlorate to drop out even though it's more soluble.
Boiling alone won't give you the chlorate, but if you stop boiling at the right time, you can just crystallise the chlorate by taking advantage of the temperature solubility curves.
@@ScrapScience is it maybe because you put NaCl in water ,electrolyze it and then the water forms chlorate and because it has gained mass from the oxygen in the hydroxide it is more . If you get what i mean
Why does the sodiumchlorate crystalize faster then the left over chloride?
Sodium chlorate has a much steeper solubility curve than sodium chloride. So, by allowing a concentrated solution of the two salts to cool down from 100 C, only the chlorate will crystallise out with the decrease in solubility. The solubility of sodium chloride almost doesn't change at all with temperature, so it doesn't crystallise out until you reduce the volume drastically.
Recomendaría que utilizes percarbonato de sodio, es un oxidante y a demás es alcalino, ayudaría con el cloro al inicio de la electrolisis y también en la eficiencia, es barato y fácil de encontrar.
Why would sodium percarbonate help with efficiency? I can't find any information on this.
@@ScrapScience realmente es una suposición, olvide colocar "podría ayudar".
La razón de que suponga esto es que el percarbonato de sodio (según mi opinión) es algo parecido al persulfato de sodio qué han mencionado en los comentarios, entonces, supuse que al ser parecidos y el percarbonato además es alcalino podría mejorar esto. Pero, ahora pensándolo bien, creo que el peróxido de hidrógeno liberado por el percarbonato se descompone en estas condiciones
@@jorgetrigueros9070 I tried it but not really effective, carbon is not wellcome I suppose....and alcalin solution not a lot. For good electrolyse PH must be around 6.5, so chloridric acid needed.
Try it and tell us please.
I created a cell of anode (positive) mmo, and cathode (negative) titanium, each of them are 5 cm * 15 cm, in a cell consisting of 2 liters of water added to them 200 grams of sodium chloride and I ran the cell on 5 volts and 20 amperes Within 24 hours, some rust appeared in the solution, and the titanium electrode turned black, taking into account that the temperature was maintained between 60 to 80 degrees. What went wrong?
please help me please
Your current density might be too high. The plates should be oriented parallel to each other to avoid the current concentrating on any small spot on the anode. Excess current can eat the mmo protective layer.
Also, titanium is not necessary as a cathode. Use a piece of stainless steel. It has some chromium in it that will erode out and serves to protect the anode as well as makes the reaction move forward.
HOW LONG SHOULD I LEAVE IN THE 500ML ELECTROLYSIS OF THE SODIUM CHLORIDE AND WATER SOLUTION ???? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
It's very difficult to explain the basics of this kind of calculation in a UA-cam comment, so I'll direct you towards a website that gives good explanations on how to make predictions of the cell runtime and production rate:
www.chlorates.exrockets.com/runtime.html
Electric in it’s copper and zink metal?
How many days does electrolysis last? Can you explain?

The runtime of the cell will depend on many factors, including:
- The size of the cell
- The current
- The anode/cathode choice
- The current density on the anode/cathode
- The temperature of the cell
It's not really something that has a simple answer, and a single UA-cam comment is not enough space to explain how all of these factors influence the runtime. I'm afraid you'll likely need to do some research to get a complete answer.
I need to minimize the time for a project. In what conditions can you minimize the time?
Can electrodes made of (stainless steel 316) be used in the electrolysis process?
For the anode and cathode
Nope.
Stainless steel only works as the cathode.
For the anode, you need either platinum, MMO, or graphite electrodes.
What about pure titanium
Does this work with Ammoniumchloride too? To make the chlorate of it?
I'm afraid not. Electrolysis of ammonium chloride results in the generation of highly reactive nitrogen species, none of which I'd like to be around (nitrogen trichloride for instance). Definitely something to avoid in my opinion.
Ammonium ions should definitely be kept away from this procedure at all times.
@scrapscience CAN I USE STAINLESS STEEL ELECTRODES TO DO THIS ??? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
Nope, stainless steel is only usable as a cathode.
For the anode, you need to use either graphite, platinum (with an optional titanium substrate), or MMO electrodes.
Love this guy!
Does boiling the resulting solution produce chlorine?
Not any significant amounts, no.
@@ScrapScience
Thanks for the reply!
I always learn a lot from your videos!
What about the temperature? At low temperatures NaOH is produced.
Temperature has minimal effect on a cell that isn't pH controlled.
Chlorate is produced regardless of temperature under these conditions - NaOH is only ever a minor constituent in solution.
If you'd like a complete description of the chemistry going on here, you can find it in my other video on chlorate cells:
ua-cam.com/video/CqMEnrQb5q8/v-deo.html
@@ScrapScience Wow! Thx 🙏
How can I prepare electrolyte for gel battery?
Add the hydroxide to electrolyte to prevent chlorine from being released to begin with. Chlorine stays in solution at higher ph.
It only takes a couple of minutes for the hydroxide concentration to build up to the point where chlorine is retained, so I wouldn't worry about it honestly.
Also, doing this makes it somewhat difficult to prevent overshooting the pH. Even just adding an extra half of a gram of NaOH to a cell of this size would push the pH way above the ideal value of 9-10, and possibly damage the anode with the strongly basic conditions.
You can definitely do it if you want to minimise the chlorine generated at the start of the cell run, but be careful of overshooting the amount of hydroxide.
Hello my friend Can I use carbon anode and stainless steel cathode
Yes
Why such slow electrolysis for that many days ?!
Because I only built the cell to handle around 4-5 amps.
@@ScrapScience
Thank you. It could have been thought that the slowness is necessary for the reaction to go well.
Can u please tell me where to get the right electrodes.. got 2 of them being fakes apready pfff
What type of electrode are you looking for? Titanium, MMO, platinum, or something else?
@@ScrapScience mmo and titanium?
I always used to get my electrodes from electrodesupply.com/ - and this is the site I always recommended because I can guarantee that the electrodes sold here are genuine. However, they no longer list any products on their website. Maybe they've shut down or something, but it might be a good idea to keep an eye on them to see if they come back.
With this source gone, I can't link you to any other suppliers of electrodes where I can guarantee the authenticity of the products, sorry. Generally, titanium and MMO electrodes are unlikely to be fake. Titanium is a cheap metal so there is little incentive to make a fake product, and MMO electrodes are easily recongisable for the black coating on the electrode surface, making them difficult to fake. Platinum is a different story, and I would say the vast majority of online listings for platinum electrodes are certainly fake.
With caution, I'll point you to this link: tinyurl.com/fhtcu4cv - These look like genuine MMO electrodes to me, though again, I can't make any guarantees because I've never bought from them before.
Please make a video similar to these but using a common electrodes that are easy to get.
This exact procedure can be followed with the use of graphite anodes instead of MMO if you need. The only extra thing you'll have to do is filter the resulting graphite particles out of solution before you crystallise out your product.
@@ScrapScienceDo graphite pencils work?
What if we put a cloth on the graphite to filter and prevent pollution
@@slimani373 They work, but they fall apart even faster than plain carbon/graphite, because they are technically a mixture of graphite and clay.
Adding a fine filter during the electrolysis might work, but the filter itself might start acting as a diaphragm and preventing hydroxide ions from properly migrating towards the anode. Why not just filter the solution after it's finished? It will achieve the same effect as far as purification is concerned.
@@ScrapScience
That is, it is easier to filter and make potassium chlorate or sodium chlorate
Or does it have to be titanium and metal oxides
Which anode and cathode I must use for this cell ? Rather than mmo ,platinum ,manganese on titanium etc..
For anodes mmo or platinum work great lead oxide can work but it's toxic and carbon works but then you need to remove all the carbon particles.. Don't use ebay "platinum" anodes because their fake and don't work.. for cathodes titanium or carbon are normally used
The anodes you can use for this cell are exactly the same as the ones you can use for a potassium chlorate cell. If you don't want to use MMO, platinum, or MnO2 electrodes, your only other options are lead dioxide (which MUST be plated onto graphite or titanium, NOT just anodised lead metal), or bare graphite. There aren't any other viable anodes which will work here.
I'd recommend just using graphite if that's all you can get. As Mark has said above, they'll fill your solution with graphite particles which will need filtering, but then you won't have to deal with the difficult and toxic process of making lead dioxide anodes.
You can use whatever you want for a cathode (excluding reactive metals like aluminium or zinc). Iron and titanium are generally best.
@@ScrapScience thanks mark and you too.If graphite is mixed with kclo3 or naclo3 ,will crystallization work to remove them from their crystals ??
After filtering the graphite particles and crystallising your product, it might still have a slight grey colour from the graphite you weren't able to remove. This won't cause any problems for most uses though.
@@ScrapScience if I want to trap fine graphite ,what should I use then ,for example fine silica
Don't discard the remaining solution, just pop it in into the refer and fractional crystalize it out.
Nice...
How much is this Power Supply and where to get it? Thx.
The power supply I'm using here is a combination of an old ATX power supply from an unwanted desktop computer, and a buck-boost converter with controllable voltage/current that I got on Ebay for about $15.
@@ScrapScience thank you, good to know it. 🙂
where do you get your power supply?
I used an old ATX power supply from an unwanted desktop computer, coupled with a $15 buck-boost converter (with controllable current/voltage) from Ebay.