Fri, Jun 12, 2009
Rechargable lithium batteries contain a coiled strip of lithium metal that can be useful in various chemical reactions. The strip can be removed from a battery but it takes a bit of effort and some precautions are necessary. Here is a demonstration of how to extract the lithium strip.
Tue, Jul 26, 2016
Nurdrage generates the green flame reminiscent of wildfire in Game of Thrones by burning borax dissolved in methanol. But the sodium in the borax adds yellow to the flame. So Nurdrage converts the borax to trimethyl borate which requires a long fractional distillation but generates an intense green flame.
Fri, Apr 7, 2017
Dioxane can be made by the dehydration of ethylene glycol commonly found in antifreeze. However, a number of side products are created in the reaction so most of the effort comes in the purification process. The impurities can be dealt with using additional drying agents and fractional distillation.
Fri, Apr 28, 2017
Here is a method for producing sodium metal without the complexity needed for electrolysis from sodium hydroxide. Sodium is a liquid at the boiling point of dioxane making it easy to separate from magnesium oxide in the sodium magnesium oxide aggregate used as the starting material.
Sat, Aug 4, 2018
Sodium bromide reacts with sulfuric acid producing hydrobromic acid which is useful for Grignard reactions. Distallation yields a concentrated solution of about 48% hydrobromic acid. Yield can be increased by cooling and filtering the partially distilled reaction mixture to remove salts then continuing the distillation.
Fri, Nov 1, 2019
There are a host of ways to generate ammonia gas. The objective here is to identify a method that produces ammonia at a controlled rate for eventually conversion to nitric acid via the Ostwald Process. Of the methods tried and demonstrated the reaction of sodium hydroxide on urea was selected.