jdurg

Okay, I just thought of another method. How about the hydrolysis of chlorobenzene? First off, take your benzoic acid and convert it all to benzene. Then take your benzene and subject it to chlorine gas and Iron (III) Chloride. This will give you mono-chlorobenzene. Take this chlorobenzene and reflux at about 350 degrees Celcius with sodium hydroxide and water. This will result in sodium phenoxide. Add some acd to this (probably HCl would work) and you'll get phenol and sodium chloride!

Wait a minute. I just thought of another method. First off, do you have any hydroxylamine? (H2N-OH). If you do, then you can esterify your benzoic acid with some benzene that you say you have produced. At this point, add some hydroxylamine to your benzyl-benzoate ester. If this is done in the presence of sodium hydroxide, you'll wind up with phenol and the benzene derivative of hydroxamic acid.

Then i'm afraid that the reaction of turning benzoic acid to phenol simply cannot happen. In order to remove the COOH group you need a good reducing agent. The only other methods of reduction won't cleave the entire COOH group off of there. Instead you'll get a toluene with an OH group on the -CH3 appendage.

What about sodium borohydride? That would work as well, albeit a bit slower than with lithium aluminum hydride.

Couldn't you esterify the benzoic acid and then reduce it with LiAlH4?

Yes, H2S does smell. It is the smell of rotted eggs. The human nose is able to detect H2S in amazingly small quantities. Even the tiniest amounts of H2S will be VERY noticeable to a human being. This is a very good thing because H2S is insidiously toxic. It's up there with hydrogen cyanide in terms of lethality. The thing is, you are able to detect the presence of H2S at levels far below the lethal range. What's problematic is that H2S numbs the scent receptors in your nose. So after a short exposure, you can't smell it anymore and you'll think that it has all dissipated and you'll stay in the same area. When the coroner stops by, however, they'll know that it didn't all dissipate. I believe that 'stink bombs' use a mixture of sodium thiosulphate and hypochlorite to generate some sulfur oxides which are easy to detect as a nasty smell without a very high concentration being needed.

Actually, aluminum is one of the few metals that will react with NaOH.

You could also take a look at this article I wrote here. It's an article showing the production of sodium iodide from its constituent elements; sodium metal and iodine nodules. There are quite a few pictures and a very basic explanation of what is going on. Feel free to use that article and the pictures in it if you need to.

To put it simply, oxidation state and charge are two completely different things. Sometimes they happen to match, but they are NOT the same thing.

Take a sample of the solution and add some vinegar to it. If there is bubbling, then you still have some bicarbonate/carbonate in there.

Check out 'Chemsavers' on E-Bay.

I know that it can be obtained through the decomposition of lead azide as well, though it's not exactly a controlled process and your product may wind up god knows where.

The barium doesn't have to be oxidize in order to give off the green color. The color is given off due to the excited electrons in the Barium ion. The oxidation occurs between the chlorate and the dextrin, I believe.

take a look at the 'so you like to collect elements' link at the top of the forum here.

No problem. But make sure you're looking at the equation in the right direction. If you are looking at reduction potentials, you'll see equations like this; Cu2+ + 2e- => Cu(s) +0.34 The oxidation potential is then Cu(s) => Cu2+ + 2e- -0.34 Also remember that copper can exist in multiple oxidation states while Nickel really doesn't do that.

If you are trying to get sodium metal from salt and water, you won't get it. You'll only get hydrogen gas, chlorine gas, and after a while some oxygen gas too. What you need to find is a table of standard reduction potentials. That should help you out.

I agree.

It is very possible that you have some Al(OH)xCl complexes there.

What will happen if you try this in anything but an inert atmosphere is that as the potassium or sodium metal forms it will do so in a liquid state. With the fact that it's a liquid and there are highly oxidizing gases in the area at a high temperature, it will immediately catch fire and react. Chlorine gas will build up and immediately react with any and all metal that is formed at that temperature. (The heated chlorine may also ignite anything else in the area too). If heated high enough, any nitrate is likely to rapidly decompose flinging molten salt all over the place and causing numerous fires. Nitrates aren't the most stable of the 'stable' compounds. If molten nitrates are electrolyzed, I'm pretty sure it will create oxygen gas and nitric oxide which is a VERY nasty gas. (I'd say it's even worse than chlorine). So yes, I would say that you'd get some nasty gas buildup and in the end you won't even have any potassium/sodium leftover because it will have reacted with the air and the gas you're also forming in the electrolysis.

Aluminum chloride will dissociate into aluminum hydroxide and hydrochloric acid in water. So as soon as you dump it in, you no longer have aluminum chloride. You get this nasty gunk of aluminum hydroxide and an acidic solution. Your three methods won't work to produce aluminum metal for the following reasons; 1): AlCl3 is VERY hygroscopic. It will readily soak up moisture in the air forming some pretty nasty HCL vapors. If you try and heat it, it will react with the little bits of moisure in the air forming aluminum oxide and hydrogen chloride. It does not decompose into chlorine and aluminum. 2): If you place aluminum chloride in water, you get an acidic solution and aluminum hydroxide 'jelly'. Also, Aluminum is a VERY reactive metal. You just don't typically notice that since the oxide coating passivates it quite well. In a solution, aluminum ions will remain and hydrogen gas will be given off. It's akin to trying to form sodium metal from an aqueous electrolysis; it's just not going to happen. 3): Aluminum chloride, once again, forms a solution of hydrochloric acid in contact with water and a 'gunky' mass of aluminum hydroxide. Placing magnesium ribbon in there will just result in the production of hydrogen gas. Aluminum metal will not be formed. If aluminum was really easy to make, it would have been produced in mass quantities a long, long time ago. (At one point, it was considered as precious a metal as gold and silver because nobody could figure out how to easily make it).

Yes, it is only a 'rule of thumb'. Take gold, for example. Gold has only 1 6s electron while osmium, which is three spots to gold's left, has 2 6s electrons.

That may work, but not to a great extent at all. The iodide ion simply acts as a catalyst in the decomposition of hydroxgen peroxide. You may make some iodine, but that will instantly form the I3- ion in solution and you'll no longer have your solid iodine crystals. It's just not a very effective method of producing iodine. Using a hypochlorite solution would be much more effective at turning iodide to iodine.

Are you sure about that? I mean, I can see the troubles it might cause if you soak your genitals in there, but otherwise I can't fathom how it can alter a reproductive system. HI is a very strong haloacid and easily dissociates into H+ ions and I- ions in contact with water, so inside the body it does not exist as HI at all. Therefore, you just need to examine the toxicity of the H+ and I- ions. The I- ion is not very toxic at all, and I have not found any toxicity data for HI beyond what you would expect to find for acids. (Corrosive to skin, damaging to respiratory tract, causes pulmonary oedema, etc. etc.). NOWHERE is there any toxicological data stating that HI causes reporductive damage. Now does that mean that I want to be inhaling the stuff? God no. The damage it does to your respiratory tract is nasty enough.

H2O2 of that composition is also a very potent oxidizer, and it will catalytically decompose at the slight presence of an iodide salt, any trace of transition metals, etc. etc. When it decomposes, it does so with a great amount of heat and the oxygen and water that results from the decomposition will cause a lot of damage. The elevated temperatures will cause anything in its path to instantly ignite from all the freed oxygen, and the high temperature steam will cause nasty burns to human flesh in addition to the burning from the oxygen.