woelen

Yes, I know that supplier. I once wrote an email to them, requesting price info on some transition metal salts. However, I never received a reply from them, also after sending a reminder, they still remained silent towards me. I see that they are focussed on pyro stuff, that may be the reason that they could not help me (my request was on totally different types of chems), but still, they could have responded to me. Another really interesting company is Chaomi Chemicals. An Estonian company. I have purchased chemicals from then two times and they were very helpful. They have a lot of interesting stuff at very decent prices. Their link is http://chemicals.50webs.com/. They only ship to EU countries and they want to know whether you are an adult. If you order small quantities then their shipping costs will be much lower than the values quoted on their site.

The clear layer of liquid, was this concentrated H2SO4 with nitrate in it, or did it also contain large quantities of water? If it is concentrated H2SO4, then the brown color can be explained by assuming impurities in the toluene. Chemicals like acetone, MEK, certain aromatics, tend to be dehydrated and then form polymeric species, which are dark brown (they can even become black) and quite viscous. It might be that this also happened with your liquid. Once, I did an experiment by adding concentrated sulphuric acid to acetone. I mixed the liquids in a 1 : 1 ratio by volume. Initially, the liquid remains clear and on mixing quite some heat is produced (although not as much as with water). I dripped the acid into the acetone and swirled occasionally, letting it cool down in between. When the acid was added, the bottle was tightly capped. One day later, the liquid was orange. Another day later, it was dark red. A week later, it was very dark brown and also very viscous. It had changed into a syrup. What happens is that the acetone molecules are partly hydrated and form longer chains with all kinds of side branches. This ill-defined polymeric mix is viscous and these large molecules look brown. It was a nice experiment though.

Jdurg, this decomposition is VERY slow, when the acid is stored in the dark. Now 22 years ago, I purchased a brown glass bottle of 65% HNO3, and I put this in a box somewhere in a dark place in my parent's home. Lateron, I moved and forgot about the bottle of acid. Recently, I found that same bottle of HNO3 again in its box. It was covered by some dust and there was a very thin layer of white frost-like stuff around the neck of the bottle. I rinsed away all stuff and let the bottle dry. The acid in the bottle still is concentrated, the volume of acid still is the same (almost 1 liter, and it also was, when it was put over there), and the liquid still is perfectly colorless. It has survived cold winters, and hot summers. I was really surprised to see that nitric acid remains good for so long. So, I think, that as long as the acid is stored in a glass bottle with a thick inert plastic cap, that it can be stored at an ordinary home without problems. But, the cap must be very good. The bottle I have had such a sturdy thick red cap, with a teflon white disk inside. These are well-known (at least over here in Europe) in bottles in which corrosive chemicals are stored.

Raivo, with such high concentrations of acid I indeed think sulfonation is a serious issue, but when the concentration is just 15 ... 20% (which is the case when 30% H2O2 and 30% H2SO4 are mixed 1 : 1) then I see no problem with that. With the H2O2 mix, I'm quite sure that H2O2 alone will not work easily and that a lot of the H2O2 simply will decompose. Acid stabilises H2O2 and it helps making it a stronger oxidizer. The same is true for permanganate. In acidic conditions this is a much stronger oxidizer. With the H2O2 I would first try it in small amounts, before spending a lot of chemicals. I just gave it as a suggestion and I expect it to work, but I've notr tried that personally. That is why I wrote I'm not sure about that. @YT: You could mix in some conc. H2SO4 in some of your 9% H2O2. That does not dilute the material too much and it may be succesful as well.

Welcome to the SFN forums and hopefully you will have a good time over here . You can indeed make HNO3 from a nitrate salt (most suitable are KNO3 and NaNO3), by adding the solid to concentrated H2SO4. You, however, need to distill the acid and that is not such an easy task. Nitric acid is corrosive like hell and it will eat your distilling apparatus away, when it is not an all-glass apparatus (possibly with teflon joins). With a dry salt and concentrated H2SO4 you obtain red fuming nitric acid. That is a solution of NO2 in HNO3. It is amazingly corrosive and very hard to use in a home lab. Boiling temperature will be somewhere between 80 and 90 C. You could also make more pure HNO3 (besides having water in it) by mixing some water with the H2SO4 (be careful: always add acid to water very slowly, while stirring). Mix 1 part of water with 2 parts of acid. To that, you add the solid salt and then you do the distillation again. Now you get less decomposition and the acid is much cleaner. This can yield between 50 and 70% acid, with only a small amount of NO2 dissolved in it. This probably is what you want. Also here, however, the distilling apparatus needs to be all-glass with teflon joins. Boiling temperature will be somewhere between 120 and 130 C. As you see, making HNO3 at home is possible, but not easy. It must be done with the greatest care.

Without the sulphuric acid, the oxidation state goes from +7 to +4 in the manganese, so the compound only gives 3 electrons for oxidation for each permanganate ion. With the sulphuric acid the oxidation state can go from +7 to +2, so this adds another two electrons and this allows 5/3 times as much to be oxidized. KNO3 is not really suitable. It either does nothing, or it starts to nitrate the material, but that occurs at very high concentrations in a situation where hardly any water is present. Another oxidizer could be 30% H2O2 + 30% H2SO4, but I'm not sure about that. One could try that. Also, NaClO3 could do the trick, but I'm afraid that give too much side reactions. With this, Cl2 and ClO2 can be formed as well and especially the first may lead to chloro-substituted products. Chlorate is not a very clean oxidizer.

@Borek: Indeed, the purple smoke is very neat looking. Also without high-speed camera, that effect can be watched nicely. @Gilded: I also completed the page on the Mn2O7 experiments. This shows formation of nice mushrooms clouds of smoke and fire: http://woelen.scheikunde.net/science/chem/exps/mn2o7_hs/index.html The use of a high speed digital camera indeed adds a whole new dimension to the chemistry experiments. Features can be detected, which otherwise would remain unnoticed.

Theoretically from 100 grams of KMnO4, 48.59 grams of toluene and 93.09 grams of H2SO4 you would obtain almost 64.40 grams of benzoic acid. That would be 100% theoretical yield. You need quite some excess H2SO4 and excess toluene. So, the yield is not as pathetic as you describe. With 10 grams of KMnO4, 5 grams of toluene and 15 grams of H2SO4, mixed with 25 grams of water you should obtain at least 6 grams of benzoic acid. I cannot agree with that. MnO2 and H2SO4 only readily forms MnSO4 in the presence of a reductor. That reductor in this case is the toluene. The Mn goes from oxidation state +4 to +2.

First check your reactants! MgHCO3 is a non-existent thing and the reaction which you describe right now is nonsense. Before proceeding you have to find out what chemicals are present in reality.

Cr2O3 in fact cannot be dissolved in any solvent, other than molten NaOH, KOH or other molten alkali salt. This is a well-known property of many metal oxides, that, once they are calcined, they become remarkably inert. This is because of formation of a very compact and stable crystalline structure for the oxide. This effect is most notable on the amphoteric oxides (e.g. Cr2O3, Al2O3, TiO2, SnO2, Fe2O3, Co3O4), it also exists, however to a lesser extent with other oxides. E.g. crystalline MnO2 also is very hard to dissolve. Even warm concentrated H2SO4 will not dissolve your Cr2O3. So, if you want something nice with it, then either you have to dissolve it in molten NaOH (which is very dangerous!!!!), or you have to make a thermite mix of it (mix with Al-powder). The resulting (impure) chromium metal then can be dissolved in hydrochloric acid and the impurities (mainly Al2O3) remain behind. Igniting such a thermite requires very high temperatures, but once the reaction is going it is unstoppable. You have to do that OUTSIDE, and when the mix ignites, you have to be sufficiently far away. There may be drops of molten chromium being sprayed around! A magnesium ribbon probably is sufficiently hot to ignite such a mix.

You can also nicely see this with plain pencils. The soft ones of mainly layers of graphite, which are in parallel to the paper, when you are drawing. So, when drawing, the "sheets" of graphits easily slip away from the tip of the pencil. The hard pencils mainly have "sheets" along the long direction of the rod inside. These are harder, because now, sheets have to break apart. These hard pencils have a much better conductivity along the long direction of the thin rod.

For this kind of high speed filming I use a Canon Powershot A620. This camera is very good at making pictures, and also in filming. I am disappointed by its macro capabilities though. For that purpose (see most still pictures on my website) I use a Pentax Optio S. I also did experiments with Mn2O7. Currently I'm working on a webpage about that and the results I will post lateron.

Indeed, I have the idea that such a value does not exist. What really happens is that KNO3 dissolves somewhat in sulphuric acid, giving K(+) and NO3(-) ions. The NO3(-) reacts with H2SO4 giving HNO3 and HSO4(-). For that reaction there probably will be a Keq, but I doubt you will find that somewhere on the Internet. I don't know its value, but it will be mostly on the HNO3 side I think. It can even go further: HNO3 + H2SO4 <--> H2NO3(+) + HSO4(-) H2NO3(+) <--> H2O + NO2(+) So-called nitronium ions are formed in the acid mix. These ions are strong nitrating agents. Mostly, however, you will have plain HNO3 in the solution. You can distill off the HNO3 as a pure acid (99+ %), but this is accompanied with a lot of decomposition to NO2, O2 and H2O. What you really get is red fuming nitric acid, which is a fairly concentrated solution of NO2 in HNO3, with a few percent of water in it as well. I don't think you want that, it is real crap and quite useless stuff. Not suitable for nitrating purposes (it just is a very strong oxidizer, oxidizing every organic to crap and not selective at all). If you want nice clean nitric acid, then mix some water with H2SO4 (1 part of water with 2 parts of acid) and then add the KNO3. Using this, you can distill the azeotrope of water and HNO3, with 68% HNO3. This will yield acid, almost free of NO2. When distilled carefully, the acid only is pale yellow at most, indicating that only a small amount of NO2 is in it.

I did a nice and quite spectacular experiment, in which red phosphorous is reacting with KIO4. A pink/purple cloud is produced and an intensely bright and hot flash. Really beautiful. I made little movies at this at 60 frames per second, and the result is quite impressive. Unfortunately, I could not capture the very moment of explosion itself (total overexposure of the camera), but both the onset and the afterglow can perfectly be captured. Here is a link to the webpage, describing the experiment: http://woelen.scheikunde.net/science/chem/exps/KIO4+P/index.html Any comments on this are welcome. Also if you have suggestions for similar experiments, which can safely be performed, I would like to know.

Have a look at this one. A beautiful arc, with a lot of technical information about it. So, arcs can be maintained quite a long time in air. This one existed for seconds. http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm#500_kV_Switch

Rotation implies acceleration! As soon as something is rotating, any other objects are accelerated relative to the rotating object, the acceleration being proportional to the distance between the rotating object and the other object (~wxR, where w is the angular velocity vector and R is the distance vector, x is the exterior product). I do not precisely understand what you mean with reference frame, in the context of rotation. Reference frames are attached to objects. These objects can be some virtual point in space, but also observers or objects under consideration. Suppose you are sitting in a ball, which itself is put in a bigger ball. The smallest ball, in which you are sitting can rotate completely freely inside the bigger ball. Now, a rope is attached to the bigger ball and it is rotated along a fixed point. Now, do you think that there is any form of rotation of the smaller ball inside the bigger ball, such that you do not feel any force? Such a form of rotation does not exist! You can remove the sense of rotation, but then you feel other accelerations. There is a very simple reason for this. You are moving along a curved trajectory, and as soon as an object is moving along a curved trajectory, it is accelerated, and that is what you feel. So, either curvature, or acceleration are felt. They in fact are the result of the same underlying phenomenon. The only difference is that with curvature, there is a component of acceleration in a direction, perpendicular to the direction of motion.

Indeed, when BP is "burnt", then a lot of interesting compounds are formed. I once have done a crude analysis of the products, and I found at least the following: K2S (smell of rotten eggs) K2CO3 (bubbling, when acid is added). This appears to be the main product. K2SO4 (precipitate with BaCl2, which does not dissolve in excess acid, such as HCl or HNO3) KNO2 (this sometimes is formed, especially, when the mix is low in sulphur, this can be detected, because of formation of brown gas on addition of an acid). Indeed, the reaction is very complex and there are MANY competing reactions. Besides these solid products, I'm quite sure that the gaseous stuff contains SO2 (typical sulphurous smell), CO2, and N2.

The green color is due to dissolved NO2. I also did a similar experiment, by dissolving 99.999% Bi metal in reagent grade 68% HNO3. Bi(3+) ions are colorless, but the solution becomes a nice green. What really happens is that quite some NO2 dissolves in the liquid. NO2 is brown. It partly disproporionates to form NO and HNO3 with the water in the liquid. NO in turn reacts with more NO2 to form the deep blue N2O3. The mix of deep blue N2O3 and brown NO2 can have all colors ranging from nice green to brown/yellow, depending on the ratio of NO2/N2O3. If you dilute your solution with water, then you'll see that its color quickly disappears and that it becomes colorless. All N2O3 then reacts with the water, forming HNO3 and NO, and NO2 also reacts with water, forming HNO3 and NO. The NO bubbles out of solution as a colorless gas. If the green color persists on dilution, then your silver was impure, and indeed may contain nickel, chromium or copper. But I do not expect that to happen, just try it with a small amount from your solution. ==================================== Now a word of warning: NEVER do dissolve so much metal in HNO3 again, when you have no good way to get out of the NO2. Seriously, NO2 can kill you. It is particularly insidious, because it has a delayed effect. At first, it does not feel that bad, but 24 hours later, you can have serious edemia and it has happened before that people "drowned" in their own water, formed in the lungs, many hours after a serious NO2-exposure. Chemistry is fun, but don't play with your life! If after 24 hours you still do not have any complaints, then there is no need to worry anymore. But next time, please be more careful. E.g. you could add acid in small portions. It takes some more patience. Another option might be to go out to a place in the free field and do the experiment over there, or wait until you have a really windy day and all gas is blown away immediately.

@bascule: If I read the page of that company, then I think they claim continuous operation of welding stations. With 1 gallon of water, they claim to be able to operate a few welding stations continuously for 8 hours or so, taking 17A of current from a 220/240V wall outlet. If they really can make that claim true, then they have done a good job. But I have my doubts... @YT: If this compound HHO exists, then it certainly is not something with plasma. An entity HHO in fact is kind of 'molecule'. Two atoms of hydrogen together form a magnecule HxH, which in turn bonds to oxygen with two normal chemical bonds. So, we have a molecule, consisting of an oxygen atom and a dihydrogen magnecule. This magecule HxH is something totally different than ordinary H2. But also here, I still have my doubts, but it looks interesting enough (especially from a fundamental scientific point of view) to keep an eye on the next few months.

budullewraagh, making SO3 is not simple at all. The chemicals, needed for it, indeed are very cheap, but the process is incredibly difficult to perform at home. Have a look at sciencemadness, where they have a full thread devoted to making SO3. If you look at the huge problems in making that and see that every idea tends to fail or have pathetic yields at best, at the cost of lots of energy and with high risk, then I can only come to the conclusion that making SO3 in a home-lab is REALLY REALLY difficult. Beyond doubt, for 99+ % of all home-hobby chemists this simply is beyond reach. At least, for me it is.

The usefulness of this stuff is one thing and if it is useful, then that would be very nice. Any conversion of energy from one form to another form is accompanied with losses, as you already concluded yourself. So, HHO will not be the answer to the oil problem. doG already gave an excellent reply on why HHO could be useful, so I'll not elaborate on that again. For me, it is of a much more far-reaching consequence. If the compound (HxH)=O really exists, then a whole new type of chemical bond is discovered and a really fundamental breakthrough in physics and chemistry is found. If this really is true, then I think that this is of great importance to science as a whole. So, we have the practical thing, but we also have the fundamental scientific thing and the latter in the long run can have much greater consequences than the short-term practical use of this compound. I have no real opinion on this yet, but I'll certainly keep an eye on this the next few months. So I go with raivo and say 'let's wait and see'. Could you explain this in more detail? Brown's gas is nothing special or interesting, it is just H2/O2 mix at 2:1 volume ratio, but (HxH)=O apparantly is something completely different. What do you mean with "atomically". For me, compounds are either chemically equivalent, or they are different, and I do not know the concept of atomically different compounds.

To all people, respronding here, please continue in the original thread. Here, just one sentence is taken out of context of a long letter, and if you read that long letter, then you'll certainly see what my intent is. I do not want to present any statement like this as an official SFN-statement, and if someone has the feeling that this is the case, then that should be corrected. Maybe the word "our" in the letter's title then should be changed, or something like that, but what Martin is accusing me of simply is not fair. With the word "our" I meant "we scientists" and it was meant in a very general way, nothing to do with specific persons or groups. Here follows the link to the original thread and I would like to invite all of you to continue in that thread, instead of here. Then you have the whole letter, and not only this single sentence. http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20844 Bascule, I was planning to dedicate a long post to all of your responses and your's I also want to take into account. I'm not offended by your responses, but Martin's is of a totally different order. Your question is fully legitimate, because it is about the post itself, Martin's is less fair, because he mixes up a lot of other things, like mod privileges, SFN policy, official statements and so on. That simply is not fair...

No, HHO is (if it exists) something really different from water. The latter you indeed could call hydrogen hydroxide, or dihydrogen monoxide. The structure of HHO is something really different. It has both H-atoms attached to each other (with some very special, up to now, unknown type of bond), while plain water has an H-O-H structure. According to the paper, the structure of HHO is (HxH)=O, where the oxygen is double bonded to the (HxH) entity. Here, the double bond is the well-known bond type, which is very common for oxygen (e.g. in many organics, such as H2C=O, CH3C(=O)OH, but also in many inorganic compounds, such as SO2). Here (HxH) is the special thing, with x representing a completely new type of bond and (HxH) acting as a kind of cluster, which as a whole can bond to other atoms in the standard way and apparently is divalent. I'm not really sure anymore whether this is total crap and fraud or not. I also discussed this subject on a dutch chemistry forum and one of those members told me that the article in the meantime is accepted, and published in a well-known peer-reviewed journal. Here is the link to the abstract: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2005.11.006 This is an article in one of the journals of Elsevier/ScienceDirect. As I stated before, I did my computations on electrolysis to H2 and O2 and yes, then the claims for 1500 liter of gas per hour really are crap and fraudulent, but if this (HxH)=O compound really exists, then things may turn out different, because the underlying mechanisms for formation of this compound are totally different from the underlying mechanisms of normal splitting into hydrogen and oxygen.

There is a really big problem with hydrino and that is that according to quantum mechanics such a compound cannot exist. If you solve the quantum mechanical equations for a single hydrogen atom, then you'll find that the lowest possible energy state for the proton/electron system is that state, with the electron in a 1s orbital. Hydrino would be hydrogen with an electron in an even lower energy state. If hydrine really exists, then we need to reconsider the theory of quantum mechanics and then one of the foundations of modern physics would be shaking. So, this has very far-reaching consequences and that is why quite some effort is put in research on hydrino. Also in the Netherlands at the University of Delft some research is done on the subject. Indeed all this is VERY interesting stuff. Search in Internet and you'll find loads of info on the subject. Be careful though, there also is a lot of pseudo-scientific crap among the publications. There is not a direct relation between hydrino and HHO besides the involvement of the element hydrogen. HHO is explained in terms of 'normal' states and does not need to refer to states, which are forbidden by quantum mechanics.

This entire stuff reminds me of a discussion about hydrino on usenet, one year ago. This also is a very special thing with hydrogen, now not in the sense of special compound, but a quantum state, which is even below the ground state of normal hydrogen. So, there would be 'orbitals' below the 1s-orbitals, and hydrino would be hydrogen with electrons in such lower orbitals. Normal hydrogen can be converted to hydrino by electrons falling down to the sub-1s orbitals, releasing large amounts of energy while doing so. The waste would be a very inert form of hydrogen. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1367-2630/7/1/127/njp5_1_127.html I realize that this is somewhat off-topic, but the type of claims and the type of controversy are quite similar, that is why I mention it. The other paper, I'll place in a dutch forum, dedicated to chemistry, where a lot of PhD's and other professionals in the field are active. I'll see what they think of it.