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Author: Subject: How come I can smell bleach?
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[*] posted on 16-11-2009 at 11:41


It's a whole lot more likely that you made NaClO3 (s) than NaOCl (s) that way.
Also you are fairly lucky that the intimate mixture of chlorate and acetate (a fuel) didn't decide to decompose violently.
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[*] posted on 16-11-2009 at 19:00


You may well be right. As for the decomposition, I estimate I started with about 4:1 sodium acetate to sodium hypochlorite, so if the reaction 3NaOCL -> 2NaCl + NaClO3 took place it would still only have given sodium acetate:sodium chloride:sodium chlorate in a 12:2:1 ratio, which sounds... kind of inert. At least in terms of decomposing itself.
It did, however, give off nasty chlorine fumes when I added HCl. If you're right there was probably some ClO2 mixed in there as well. And when I had the bright idea of adding some acetone to try to finish the haloform reaction and get rid of the (presumed) NaOCl, I must have produced some chloroacetone, because that was quite a lachrymatory product. I still have a little (acetone plus I guess chloroacetone) in a jar.
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