Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Cleaning sodium metal

skip - 16-6-2016 at 13:33

A couple years ago I bought some sodium metal and it came in foil pouches . I thought the foil would last longer , I was wrong. Upon inspection of pouches after being idle in storage, noticed the hydroxide leaking and a hole in the pouch. Bought some mineral oil and heated it @ 100-130 C for 30 minutes . Pealed the metal oxide and store the good metal in the m/oil. Even the pouches that were intact had oxidation. The pealing were piled up and set off with some water .

j_sum1 - 16-6-2016 at 14:42

NileRed has a good youtube video on cleaning sodium and another on potassium. (The K one is excellent.)
IIRC, Doug's lab also has a good sodium cleaning video.

Richard3050 - 16-6-2016 at 17:23

I agree check out the video that Nilered posted. It is really informative and worked when I was cleaning the sodium metal that I had sitting around for a couple of years.