smuv
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Chloroform synth disaster; Help Remediate
In short; what is the best/easiest/cheepest way to make this solution safe to dispose down my drain.
2kg Bleaching powder (58% CaOCl)
~8L Water
360mL acetone
~4L sand
I am thinking; plop it in a 5 gal fermenter add 2lb or so NaOH and wait a month or two.
Can anyone think of a better solution? (Please think practical)
As I am sure I will get questions what happened; in short (I will post details later when I am less frustrated), I was stupid. I made the addition of
the reagents fine, let everything sit overnight, then decided to distill the chloroform out of a 5gal fermenter. I decided (why?!) to distill it on a
gently heated sand bath, well aware that I risk cracking the fermenter. Well the damn thing cracked as everyone would expect it to, and I got tons of
hot chlorformy bleachy water bubbling everywhere in my sand bath. I don't want to work it up; I just want to cut my losses. I also dont want to
dispose of lots of chloroform down my drain and fuck up the environment because of my shortcomings.
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BromicAcid
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That might work. I was recently reading in the journal of Organic Process Research and Development about a process for mineralization of carbon tet
that gave nearly quantitative results. It was in the ASAP section (http://pubs.acs.org/journals/oprdfk/index.html) but was recently published in the journal. It is in Vol 12 Issue 4 Page 765 - 770 "Total
Mineralization of Carbon Tetrachloride under Basic Phase Transfer Conditions" and might be useful for that situation you find yourself in. Most other
things that chew up halogenated hydrocarbons are a pain in the butt to deal with, I've had nothing but trouble with Fenton's reagent and dissolving
aluminum/nickel reduction.
If you check out the reference I pointed out above you can view the flow diagram of the reaction scheme.
[Edited on 8/10/2008 by BromicAcid]
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smuv
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Interesting Bromic, will keep that in mind.
The problem right now is that with all the lime I cannot see a distinct chloroform phase. I am thinking I should acidify with HCl, so I can syphon
off whatever chloroform I can, then deal with the bulk of the solution with NaOH.
What does permanganate do to chloroform? Phosgene? or does it take it all the way to carbon dioxide and chlorine?
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woelen
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Are you living in an area, where you can keep the stuff uncovered for a while, without the risk of kids or pets accessing the material? If that is the
case, I would simply put it outside in a sunny/warm place and stir up the stuff every other day. After two weeks or so, the chloroform will have
evaporated and in the air it quickly is destroyed to less harmful compounds. The hypochlorite also will have decomposed mostly when it is put in the
sun. The solid matter then can be put in the household waste. Just assure that it does not really mix with other waste, put it in a plastic bag, which
is put in another plastic bag and dump that in the household waste. With the burning of the household waste the last remains of the chloroform will be
destroyed.
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Klute
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Be sure to destroy any calcium hypochlorite before discarding it, even after a week or so in the sun, this compound is extremly harmfull to aquatic
life forms.. More so than sodium hypochlorite, not sure why.
\"You can battle with a demon, you can embrace a demon; what the hell can you do with a fucking spiritual computer?\"
-Alice Parr
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