Uses for NaOCl?

[Alchemist]

I've obtained alot of NaOCl (s)

And I was wondering if there is any useful or cool things I could use it for?

 

Any suggestions?

[woelen]

NaOCl(s)??????

 

Are you sure? I hardly believe this, because this stuff is unstable in the solid state, as far as I know.

 

Isn't the stuff Ca(ClO)2 or Ca(ClO)Cl? These are stable solids.

 

Hypochlorite can be used as a strong oxidizer in alkaline environments, it can also be used for making chlorine gas by adding some hydrochloric acid, but that should be done with the utmost care and certainly not inside. The chlorine gas may kill you, if you are not doing this in a careful way.

 

For the careful user, however, chlorine gas is a very nice chemical to experiment with (e.g. try burning a stick of wood, immersed in liquid candle-wax or candle-stearin in pure chlorine, this is really neat to observe). There are many more interesting experiments with chlorine gas, just google around and you'll find quite a lot of them.

[budullewraagh]

i actually obtained NaOCl(s) through fractional crystallization of bleach several months ago. while it isnt particularly stable at all, it isnt likely to detonate until all water of crystallization is liberated

[jdurg]

Just because something doesn't detonate doesn't mean it's neccesarily stable. If I recall properly, NaOCl will decompose into sodium chloride and oxygen gas relatively passively.

[budullewraagh]

please note that i said "while it is not particularly stable," which points to the fact that NaOCl is indeed not particularly stable. the fact that i said it would not detonate was to alleviate any concerns that alchemist may have regarding his safety. if word were brought to me that, say, KOH were not stable, concern would immediately arise in me, as i have a pound of it in my room. it would be comforting to hear that said compound was not explosively unstable, but rather unstable in that it decomposes over a long period of time.

[Alchemist]

I will check it out if its really NaOCl(s) or Calciumhypochlorite, thnx for your help!