NEMO-Chemistry
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cheap table salt
Hi.
Slightly odd question, i am buying cheapo as chips Morrisons table salt, its around 17p for 1Kg.
All it says on it is salt and anti cake additive on the packet. Anybody got any idea what is normally used as an anti caking product in table salt?
Its curiosity more than anything, i am recrystallizing some of it anyway to make crystals. The crystals are not for display etc but for a chlorate
cell, the idea is to put the crystals inside a 'net enclosure' to ensure the chloride ions are kept up.
I also have a way to keep it slightly acidic and i am adding potassium dichromate as per Woelens web page.
My cell is kind of a tube shape but fairly deep (24 inches or so).
I am simply curious as to what is normally used as an anti caking agent.
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Velzee
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The anticaking agent is sodium ferrocyanide(reference: https://groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/product/M-savers-Tab...).
Check out the ScienceMadness Wiki: http://www.sciencemadness.org/smwiki/index.php/Main_Page
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
—Arthur Schopenhauer
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Lotilko
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I suppose it's either sodium or potassium ferrocyanide.
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NEMO-Chemistry
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Thanks, i looked and looked on the page in the link and didnt see it!!
I wondered why you linked to it (apart from to annoy me with the price increase  ), then i spotted the bit its mentioned.
Thanks for that i couldnt spot it anywhere lol. The amount must be tiny unfortunately. At least i can completely ignore its presence
Still in a grumble its gone up 8p or whatever! Shame our local store dosnt do potassium chloride  , they do lo salt but that is something like 70% sodium and 29% potassium chloride.
Its also branded so costs more than just ordering potassium chloride. They do a home brand dishwasher tablet, no idea whats in it, but use it a few
times and it seems to etch your glass! Pretty good as a crud soaker but not great for long term use.
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woelen
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If you want potassium chloride, try to find fertililizer with rating N :K =
0:0:60. This is fairly pure KCl, good enough for electrolysis. It can be purchased in 25 kg bags and is dirt cheap. You may have to search for a
while, but it should be present in some local shops for agrarian products. Best chance in shops for real farmers, not the gardening shops for urban
people.
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NEMO-Chemistry
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Quote: Originally posted by woelen  | | If you want potassium chloride, try to find fertililizer with rating N:K =
0:0:60. This is fairly pure KCl, good enough for electrolysis. It can be purchased in 25 kg bags and is dirt cheap. You may have to search for a
while, but it should be present in some local shops for agrarian products. Best chance in shops for real farmers, not the gardening shops for urban
people. |
Thanks for that! We have a limited range of shops where we are, but farming supplies are pretty common in most parts of Scotland except the large
cities.
We have one not so far away so i checked this morning, they dont have any but can order it and the price is pretty good. I also discovered that
phosphoric acid (85% i think), is available from them in 25 ltr drums for around £30.
Its alot of acid but the price is good, i will see if anyone i know at the new chemistry club at school wants to buy some with me. They sell a few
things but the bulk makes it a bit awkward to handle, unless i sell of the excess i guess.
One thing they dont sell is Nitrates! I found this odd so asked why, apparently i live in something called a nitrate sensitive area and farmers are
not meant to use nitrates directly on the soil!!
Bloody Governments interfering, not everyone wanting nitrates is going to use them as fertilizer!! .
Shops and supermarkets are a waste of time around here, but i am slowly finding good online sources for various things. Shopping now takes ages as i
go label reading lol.
A trip to school while its closed for the Holidays (back next week), they are replacing equipment in the science block, this means moving old stuff to
more obscure cupboards!!
I managed to bag a few unusual item's and another couple of burettes! I will post a pic of a non used one with a calibration certificate!! The
certificate was granted in 1960 something!
How many have a unused certificated burette from the medieval days! , well ok
maybe not that long ago but nearly.
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NedsHead
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I found my KCl at a rural supplies store, I got lucky because it isn't even used in this area, when they consulted their computer system it returned a
damaged stock code from years past and after a bit of pallet shuffling on the forklift I was given a ripped bag containing approx 5kg of KCl
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NEMO-Chemistry
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Now that is what you call a result!
Its amazing what you find in farm suppliers, mostly its not on display and you have to go hunting through racks etc out the back.
The main problem is the size, price wise its almost as cheap to buy 25Kg as it is to buy 500g online! But who actually needs 25Kg? Unless i can
offload what i dont need.
Its a bit like pottery shops, they use some odd names for things, so i have been looking them up to see what they are.
Got my exam results yesterday! my weeks of preparing my parents for a bit of bad news seemed to pay off .
Turns out my dire warnings of possible bad results ended up unfounded , this
naturally gave them a huge sigh of relief and me a gift of £300 to spend on solvents and chemicals.
The bad news is, when you have zero money you can name two dozen chemicals you must have, when you have some money it is suddenly very hard to decide
what you really want/need!
Definitely going to buy some solvents and a decent filter funnel. J SUM1 and his competition has made me think about what i can buy that will give me
the most reagents.
I didnt think my results would be particularly bad, but i figured no harm in preparing the parents for bad news lol, seems they were relieved and
pleased in the end...........
[Edited on 10-8-2016 by NEMO-Chemistry]
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woelen
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@NEMO-Chemistry: You have very cool parents if they give you money for buying chemicals and glassware. Tell them that one of the oldies on
sciencemadness told that to you
Pottery suppliers indeed are very nice and they sell quite a lot of chemicals. Try to buy small quantities (or share them with others), so that you
get as many as possible different reagents. If you have test tubes and a small heater, then you can do a lot of experiments on a micro scale and then
you only need small quantities.
The following transition metals have very interesting chemistry:
- cobalt (pottery: cobalt carbonate or cobalt sulfate, do NOT buy the oxide, it is extremely inert)
- copper (pottery: copper oxide or copper carbonate)
- nickel (nickel carbonate, the oxide can be used, but dissolves with difficulty)
- chromium (chrome alum on eBay, do NOT buy chromium(III) oxide, it is extremely inert)
- vanadium(pottery: vanadium pentoxide)
- manganese (eBay: potassium permanganate; pottery: manganese dioxide)
- iron (ferric chloride in an electronics hobby shop at printed circuit board etchant; ferrous sulfate in gardening shops as fertilizer or as
snail-killer)
Other chemicals you can buy locally:
- sodium peroxodisulfate (another etchant, to be purchased at electronics hobby shops)
- ammonium peroxodisulfate (yet another etchant)
- sodium metabisulfite or potassium metabisulfite (shop for wine making and beer brewing)
- lactic acid (shop for wine making)
- sodium bisulfate (swimming pool pH-minus)
- TCCA (swimming pool chlorinator)
- Na-DCCA (swimming pool chlorinator)
- oxone (swimming pool oxygenator, chlorine-free swimming pool cleaner)
- alum (gardening shops, fertilizer for hortensias in order to get blue flowers instead of pink flowers)
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NEMO-Chemistry
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Thanks for the list! Some of the pool stuff will take some online scouring but doable.
The list of inert stuff is very useful, i nearly got a couple. The after school chemistry club has 5 of us, it starts in a couple of weeks when we go
back. So potentially i have 4 others i can share chems with.
Yeah they are pretty cool, i feel slightly guilty i let them think it could be bad news lol, but not so guilty i wont take the money.
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