Sciencemadness Discussion Board

getting hcl

thefireisfun - 6-11-2009 at 17:59

ok so me and my friend are really into chemistry and such, and we have alot of chemicals and such, but my parents wont let me get some hcl. and i dont want to go to lowes and get a 2 gallon jug of the stuff because i dont need a whole lot of it. and online, you need to be 21 or older to get acids. is there an easier way that a 17 year old kid can get a good concentration of hcl?

User - 6-11-2009 at 19:14

It might well be that iam just drunk, and iam.
This really isn't worth posting.
You have a lot of chemicals but cant find high conc. HCl.
Right...

You really should try the internet, helps a lot.
Sorry for being an asshole , or maybe not..

DJF90 - 6-11-2009 at 19:40

You sound rather k3wlish :| and for that reason, "I'm out".

1281371269 - 7-11-2009 at 04:00

Buy it. The only easy way to make it is by reacting NaCl with H2SO4, but if you can't get HCl then I doubt you can get that either.

bquirky - 7-11-2009 at 07:17

hey ive got some beers in me too i might as well have a stab..

Go and buy it from a hardware shop you can probobly get a one or two liters for 10 or 20 bucks at a hardware shop.. brickies use it for cleaning up mortar mess from brick work

Things to try..

dump some aluminium in it and ask a friend what it smells like :)

pour some ina dish, hide it in your shed and watch your tool's rust.

Use it to clean the soap scum off your shower windows (bonus points if you have a Al frame)

mix it with some ' cloudy ammonia' ammonium hydroxide and make some ammonium chloride solution. amonium chloride powder has the amusing property of getting rather cold when you mix it with water.

what other mildly amusing things can you do with hcl..

perhaps boil a beaker of it in a tightly sealed room.

seriously though.. HCL is great for cleaning glassware. I have used it for making ferrous and ferric chloride
and it can quickly remove the oxide off of most metals... but beware.. dont expect your 'clean' metal to stay oxide free for long..

have a blast but just ware some eye protection ok ? no relly. do whatever you want but GET SOME EYE PROTECTION. steal your mums old sunglasses or something.. there are heaps of cooler things to mess with but you nead to be able to see to do so .. catch my drift ?




DJF90 - 7-11-2009 at 07:27

bquirky, you missed the "mix it with acetone and hydrogen peroxide and blow your ass up".

User - 7-11-2009 at 08:28

Ow yeah this is really going somewhere, i even heard that the same thing can be done with hexamethylenetetramine instead of aceton.
I heard that the shit one can obtain that way is freaking awesome.



Seriously, iam having fun here, still i can imagine deleting this topic would be the best option.
Lmao.

[Edited on 7-11-2009 by User]

hissingnoise - 7-11-2009 at 08:29

In the good ole' days you asked the chemist (pharmacist) for spirits-of-salts and got a corked bottle of strong shit that blackened your finger-tips. . .
When we waited a few minutes, the sugar/NaClO3 mixture we'd poured it on caught (on?) fire and not only did we think the fire is fun but the heavy-duty smoke-screen is a 'gas' too. . .
There's been much progress since---and all in the wrong direction!
We were 13-14 and at that time regarded the opposite sex as dangerously unpredictable.

DJF90 - 7-11-2009 at 08:52

I dont know about you guys but I can still buy spirits of salts. £4 ish for 500ml (it might be a 750ml bottle actually) of 32% HCl, not bad as an OTC source ;)


[Edited on 7-11-2009 by DJF90]

JohnWW - 7-11-2009 at 11:04

HCl solution, technical grade, is sold in hardware and similar stores as a soldering flux, for removing oxide layers on metals before applying molten solder. It may come with a green or yellow tinge, due to the presence of a trace of iron.

For many centuries it was made as "spirits of salt" by reacting concentrated H2SO4 with NaCl, and distilling off and collecting the HCl in water. More recently, since about last century, another important industrial source has been as a byproduct of chlorination reactions on hydrocarbons, particularly to produce chlorocarbon insecticides such as DDT, solvents, and refrigerant gases; but this source has been considerably reduced due to these principal chlorination products having gone out of favor due to residual toxicity to non-target species and atmospheric ozone depletion.

[Edited on 8-11-09 by JohnWW]

psychokinetic - 7-11-2009 at 11:42

Quote: Originally posted by hissingnoise  
In the good ole' days you asked the chemist (pharmacist) for spirits-of-salts and got a corked bottle of strong shit that blackened your finger-tips. . .
When we waited a few minutes, the sugar/NaClO3 mixture we'd poured it on caught (on?) fire and not only did we think the fire is fun but the heavy-duty smoke-screen is a 'gas' too. . .
There's been much progress since---and all in the wrong direction!
We were 13-14 and at that time regarded the opposite sex as dangerously unpredictable.


I remember those days, and I'm none to elderly myself. I used to bleach my hair with 60% H2O2 from a chemist, and 80% was available too. None of this 'hiding from my parents'....actually my mother probably bought it for me. Now they make it in 6% if your chemist is a rebel and wants to sell someting with a bit more kick than 3%. Hence we have people who have no idea what's going on, thinking they're sneaky by going online and attempting to acquire what is freely available elsewhere. Then the explosion is on the news.

I'm 23 now hissing, and I think chemistry is still more predictable than the opposite sex. :P

evil_lurker - 7-11-2009 at 12:11

Oh dear fucking god.

Put your big girl panties on and pay the fuckers at lowes their $7 or so and get a gallon of the shit and hide it from your parents by putting it into a different container.

Sheesh.

hissingnoise - 8-11-2009 at 01:36

There's a lot of stuff you don't want to know, too!
I've stumbled over stuff I didn't want to know even existed!

blogfast25 - 8-11-2009 at 08:01

Listen, all you meanies, you've scared him away now! Another possible genius lost to the cause of Science and the fight against Obscurantism! :D

entropy51 - 8-11-2009 at 08:13

Quote:
but my parents wont let me get some hcl.
Maybe his parents know something we don't know, or can only guess about.:o

1281371269 - 8-11-2009 at 10:42

Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
Listen, all you meanies, you've scared him away now! Another possible genius lost to the cause of Science and the fight against Obscurantism! :D


Point, though maybe we also just stopped someone getting some nasty physical defects in an HCl related incident.

psychokinetic - 8-11-2009 at 11:18

Quote: Originally posted by entropy51  
Quote:
but my parents wont let me get some hcl.
Maybe his parents know something we don't know, or can only guess about.:o


Didn't you know that the Al Qaeda are trying to sell HCl to American teens so they can pour it on their marijuana to grow superweed?! It's all a conspiracy that only a few American parents know about, because God and the President told them personally. :P

entropy51 - 8-11-2009 at 11:37

Quote:
It's all a conspiracy that only a few American parents know about, because God and the President told them personally.
Or maybe he's already burned down the garage and ruined the carpet in his bedroom.

Sedit - 8-11-2009 at 14:09

This thread is funny because my parents use to buy me the boxes of Muratic acid when I was like 12 years old.. Now well over a decade later if they see me with muratic acid they ask... "well what the hell do you want that for and why would someone sell it to you"

psychokinetic - 8-11-2009 at 18:01

I went down to a Mitre 10 Mega (hardware megastore) with a shopping list (when I first started my first chemistry paper - so pretty new to the whole thing) and one of the helpful people took me all over the store to get such things as sulfur, HCl, NaOH and whatnot. She, nor the others who helped were at all phased by the idea of a young guy obtaining chemicals.

I get weirder looks at the supermarket for buying nappies and beer at the same time.

hissingnoise - 9-11-2009 at 06:16

Quote: Originally posted by psychokinetic  
I get weirder looks at the supermarket for buying nappies and beer at the same time.

They can go together you know; it depends on how much booze you can get through in a given time. . .