Hephaestus

Can we clean up this thread to keep it to topic? Is a very useful idea!

many water agers do contain large amounts of bacteria which convert the ammonia into nitrite/nitrate. Not sure what else could do it. EDTA would not.

Sulfuric acid Hydrazine sodium nitrite Bromine 4,4-azopyridine chromium trioxide ruthenium cobalt nitrate selenium vanadium oxide

Can make some Prussian Blue blueprints, "canned heat" - dissolve CaCl2 in minimum water, add alcohol and it gels. Burn the gel.

or, the cheaper option, go buy some from your local supermart impure and distaill. heck even purchase in bulk from a perfume supplier. nice detail though, and would cost a lot!

Hi from Sydney, designed, synthesised and investigated the host-guest interactions and exchange properties of nanoporous molecular materials. If that makes sense to anyone. Was honours and then PhD project. Finished last year.

Not interested in the economical prep of acetone. Just nice to say Ï've done that. Would you believe all those oxidants are now illegal for purchase by individual in Australia without licence. Not hard to make though, and got plenty. Anaerobic digestion of tartaric acid by microbes yields butanoic acid. Does citric acid get converted to anything interesting?

Whats the voltage you need to make acetone? Interesting.

Add vinegar to milk to precipitate out the protein. Squeeze this dry and you can turn this into a mouldable "plastic". An excellent old book if you can find it is "Chemistry at home for boys and girls"

Make a stink- buy some tartaric acid or cream of tartar. Dissolve say 1g in 100mL of water. Place in a sealed vessel. Place in a peice of badly aged cheese, seal up the vessel and leave in a warm, dark place for a week or so. Open up the vessel and whiff- the bacteria in the cheese (works best with parmesan, romano and bluevein) have converted the tartaric acid to butanoic acid.

Also, mechanically, a bubble cannot form without a surface to form on. In order for a bubble to stabilise and grow, it needs to build up a certain internal pressure. Any solid object, and especially one with sharp corners will catalyse / initiate and stabilise the formation of a bubble. The stronger the adhesive forces between the surface and the bubbling liquid, relative to the cohesive forces of attraction within the liquid, the easier to bubbles will form.

sorry, meant DRIED UP, old radium paint.

NaBH4 + HCl -> B2H6 B2H6 + NH3 ->(300C) borazine (inorganic benzene) Dont want to waste the sodium borohydride, but I tried yesterday it and it worked. Product decomposes in water though. Keep you all posted on other B expts.

So, theres some 50mL of old Radium paint lying nearby. How much radium you think is in that? Grandpa's old dial making odds and ends are stored in handy reach. I'd never want to attempt this prep though.

What are thermite initiator strings made from? They always burn well. I know they're coated in Aluminium powder...

I've notice recently that orange coloured liquid soaps, when acted on by hypochlorite, produce bright orange azo- oxidation products. Amine based dyes are hence commonly used.

Boron as an element is often neglected in forums. It is readily available as boric acid or borax and surely a whole spectrum of BxHy and ions are accessible. I've explored quite a few of the ugly but interesting P, As, Sb compounds and thought it nice to play with B. It would be nice to synthesise our own NaBH4 and caged boranes. Caged boranes are currently being investigated as novel cancer targeters and NaBH4 has an endless number of uses. It's also difficult to purchase these days. Lastly, a general procedure for boronic acid esters would open up a whole of carbon chem.

use your electrochemical series young skywalker, or alternatively put your question in the homework forums.

Does anyone have a prep for or has any experience with any of the various boranes? What is the best way of storing these? Lastly - a list of borane reactions would be nice to cover in this thread.

I find that o/seas shipments take several weeks longer than expected. They always seem to be moving. Must just be slow to pack and ship. They always deliver whats purchased though and are very nice to deal with.

Yep, I agree. Active carbon should work a treat, except maybe for the ethylene glycol. You definately dont want any of that left in your water.

Darkblade, KOH is caustic lye, not lye. Woelen, we only have two major chemical suppliers in Australia, and they are much more expensive than all your EU comparisons. You should consider onselling them from EU sources...

Easiest way to check - if a carbon is bound to three other atoms it is sp2 hybridised. Only C2H4 obeys this C3H6 has two sp2 carbons and one sp3 (sp3 is bound to 4 atoms).

Glass frits and filters work best. Best to simply try decanting the acid from the black impurity.

Just went to the local Asian grocery, nice large one. Found lye water - 74.5% K2CO3, 3.4% Na2CO3 solution. Saves me a whole lot of trouble making it myself, at $AU2.99/500 mL. Apparently used to "flavour" noodles and glutinous rice - go figure. By this company: http://www.punchun.com/olistx.htm Tha Asian grocery is also a good source of bulk spices for extraction, and very, very cheap "cooking wine". N-methylpyrrolidone is slow dry paint stripper and very useful solvent. By the way, "soluble sulfur". Has a detergent been added to that?