Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Chlorate separation without potassium

Glucose Oxidase - 5-5-2013 at 07:51

hello guys , i know that chlorate cells have been discussed alot on this forum but i need your help. i recently made my first working chlorate cell with 2 carbon electrodes and NaCl solution and it did work but unfortunately the product contains a remarkable amount of NaCl . I searched through the internet and every forum suggests that i use potassium to percipitate out the chlorate but the problem is i dont have any so is there any other way to purify my product?
thanks for your answers:)

BobD1001 - 5-5-2013 at 08:10

Quote: Originally posted by Glucose Oxidase  
hello guys , i know that chlorate cells have been discussed alot on this forum but i need your help. i recently made my first working chlorate cell with 2 carbon electrodes and NaCl solution and it did work but unfortunately the product contains a remarkable amount of NaCl . I searched through the internet and every forum suggests that i use potassium to percipitate out the chlorate but the problem is i dont have any so is there any other way to purify my product?
thanks for your answers:)


You want to use Potassium Chloride to precipitate out your produced chlorate. Otherwise fractional crystallization may be your best option if you intend to have you chlorate remain as sodium chlorate. You can easily buy potassium chloride as "no salt" no sodium etc. salt substitutes at the supermarket, or a more pure source is potassium chloride for sodium free water softening (plus its a lifetime supply for $15). Just mix a saturated solution of potassium chloride of according amount, and add it to the electrolyte from your chlorate cell. The potassium chlorate will instantly precipitate out of solution, and you can then filter and rinse with ice cold water.

Glucose Oxidase - 5-5-2013 at 08:24

i recently bought some no-salt salt but it had ammonium salt inside and other impurities and i dont want to risk making ammonium chlorate ( spontanously explodes) so i need another way
and thanks for the response :)

Glucose Oxidase - 5-5-2013 at 08:44

and yes i know that i must use potassium chloride and i meant by potassium an potassium containing salt ofcourse not elemental potassium

12AX7 - 5-5-2013 at 13:44

Keep running until the chloride level is low. Chlorate will crystallize due to temperature change, NaCl will not.

I doubt NaClO3 is ever really all that pure, I believe mine was always kind of a dingy brownish tint, probably from graphite and chromate residues. No idea how much chloride. But again, doesn't really matter most of the time -- whatever you're going to use it for probably doesn't care about chloride (if used for oxidation, you end up with NaCl anyway) or it's going through another step (like crystallizing KClO3).

If you can't find pure KCl, recrystallize by dissolving in boiling water, filtering, cooling and washing the crystals. Repeat as necessary for desired purity.

Tim

Glucose Oxidase - 5-5-2013 at 14:59

dear tim as wikipedia states sodium chlorate is far more soluble than chloride and anyway i was able to ignite a mixture of my crude product and sugar easily with a match so i guess it is pure enough anyway if any of the guys has any ideas please post it here and thanks alot tim :)

12AX7 - 5-5-2013 at 18:19

No, I mean if you concentrate the solution (by boiling down, or, during continuous operation, simply consuming both chloride and water, or by refilling with salt water until chlorate begins crystallizing), chlorate will dissolve on heating and crystallize out on cooling, while the chloride sits there. If there is excess solid chloride, it will neither dissolve on heating nor crystallize on cooling (at least, not as much as the chlorate will). By heating, cooling and separating the solution and chlorate, purification can be achieved.

Salts which are more soluble when hot, can be separated from those which are not (like NaCl), by thermal cycling. The simplest form of this is a convection cell, hot on one side, cold on the other; the heat-soluble salt dissolves on the hot side and crystallizes on the cool side.

Tim

Glucose Oxidase - 6-5-2013 at 10:52

ok so if i keep my cell running and add some saturated sodium chloride solution every couple of days sodium chlorate will percipitate?

12AX7 - 6-5-2013 at 16:04

Yes. When you see it crusting over (not on the top, but on the walls inside), turn off the juice, add a little water to swish around, heat it up to boiling (let the hypochlorite decompose) and proceed as usual (filtration, crystallization, etc.).

Tim

Glucose Oxidase - 7-5-2013 at 08:09

well wouldn't collecting the crust be easier?
BTW i started a 9 liter cell today wouldn't that take a week to start forming a crust? (i am using 5v computer power supply)

12AX7 - 7-5-2013 at 15:45

Yes, but the surface crust is an evaporated mixture and will contain much chloride. Or, scraping out the excess will drag out a lot of graphite crud, and chloride and hypochlorite stuck to it (or crystallized within it). If you don't mind working it up anyway, then no, it doesn't make much difference.

Tim

Glucose Oxidase - 8-5-2013 at 08:59

well thank you for bearing my questions tim i really appreciate it but here is one last question
the 9 liter cell i told you about started percipitating salts though it had started two days ago so do you have any idea what that percipitate might be?
the brine solution i made wasn't even fully saturated so what do you think have happened ( i used 2.5 kg of table salt for 9 liters of brine solution)
PS: sorry for my bad english:)
EDIT: Typo

[Edited on 8-5-2013 by Glucose Oxidase]

chloric1 - 21-12-2022 at 23:11

I’ve done this very setup before back in 2007. I filtered off most of the graphite, precipitated chromium with a pinch of barium chloride and then took my clear Chlorate rich solution and boiled until it got cloudy and stopped stirring and turned off heat. While still hot I filtered off a crop of sodium chloride because its solubility is much less than the Chlorate at same temperature. Then that filtrate went into the freezer to obtain a deposit of pure sodium Chlorate crystals as the Chlorate gets “salted out” by remaining chloride at low temperatures. I kept filtrate and added to next batch run. This way I have a continuous supply of pure Chlorate and a liquor of Chlorate contaminated with chloride.