wotaen
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Cleaning glassware after chemical garden
Hi All, I made nice little garden as a demo for my son in a few beakers. Iron(III) Chloride is particularly stubborn to clean. It's as if it was stuck
to the glass. Even scraping off doesn't work well. Any tips for getting rid of it?
Thanks
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Metacelsus
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Acid will remove iron stains, in my experience.
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MrHomeScientist
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Oxalic acid, in particular.
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DraconicAcid
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Yeah, but it's not the iron(III) chloride that he's trying to remove; it's the iron silicate that formed in the chemical garden.
I find the best thing to do with that reaction is to only do it in glassware that I don't care about.
Please remember: "Filtrate" is not a verb.
Write up your lab reports the way your instructor wants them, not the way your ex-instructor wants them.
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zwt
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I once had an old forgotten Bomex Erlenmeyer flask with some small deposits of what I suspect was copper silicate. Standard glassware cleaning
solutions did nothing so, not being particularly attached to the flask, I filled it with Whink rust remover. The deposits were gone within minutes,
and while the flask did not appear etched (it was crystal clear afterward, and didn't even have a ring where the liquid level was), it's possible some
amount of the flask was also dissolved.
[Edited on 22-9-2016 by zwt]
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wotaen
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Quote: Originally posted by zwt  | I once had an old forgotten Bomex Erlenmeyer flask with some small deposits of what I suspect was copper silicate. Standard glassware cleaning
solutions did nothing so, not being particularly attached to the flask, I filled it with Whink rust remover. The deposits were gone within minutes,
and while the flask did not appear etched (it was crystal clear afterward, and didn't even have a ring where the liquid level was), it's possible some
amount of the flask was also dissolved.
[Edited on 22-9-2016 by zwt] |
I could not find any particular details on iron silicate solubility,
the SDS on this Whink cleaner says that it's just dilute HF. I'm surprised that I can find this as a product. Will dig around to find something
similar in EU. Thanks
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