Making Sodium Acetate

[C_Sagan_Returns]

I saw on wikiHow a pictorial on making "hot ice," and it says,

 

"If you don't have sodium acetate, you can make your own from baking soda and vinegar, but it's time-consuming. Keep adding baking soda to vinegar until it stops fizzing; this reaction yields a diluted solution of sodium acetate and water. Then boil off all of the water to make sodium acetate crystals, which you can treat like the powder as described in the instructions above."

 

What would be the cleanest, most efficient way to make Sodium Acetate? Once it stops bubbling, any extra baking soda might contaminate the desired sodium acetate product. It says to keep adding baking soda, but when the water is boiled off, won't the remaining salt be a homogeneous mixture of sodium bicarbonate and sodium acetate? How do you avoid this and produce a pure product?

 

Thanks,

CSR

[UC]

Vinegar isn't that pure anyway. Your product will be discolored from organic crap that was in the vinegar. Distilled vinegar means the alcohol used to make it was distilled, but not the vinegar itself after being full of acetobacter and nutrients for the bacteria. The best way is to use a slight excess of vinegar and then boil it down, evaporating the excess acetic acid. Note that this will stink, (you know what I mean if you've ever heated vinegar before) but you won't have any carbonate or bicarbonate hanging around.

[Alexein]

This video might help ya:

 

 

Read the info bar at the side. It goes into much more detail and gives exact measurements of baking soda for the various percentages of vinegar.

 

You'll need a scale though.

[C_Sagan_Returns]

This video might help ya:

 

 

Read the info bar at the side. It goes into much more detail and gives exact measurements of baking soda for the various percentages of vinegar.

 

You'll need a scale though.

 

I didn't see anything about exact measurements and different percentages of vinegar. The video only mentions 1L of vinegar and 84g of NaHCO3 (to my knowledge). Was this extra information located in the "sidebar"? If so, I couldn't figure out how to access it!! Where is this "sidebar"?

 

The video also mentions that the final product may develop a yellow tinge as one removes 9/10ths of the water by way of boiling the solution. If one's "Hot Ice" preparation came out dark yellow in colour, would activated charcoal clear up the solution? (I'm not really sure how that stuff works, I just know it does, sometimes...)

 

Thanks,

CSR

[UC]

You could give activated charcoal a try. It's good at adsorbing organic molecules onto it's enormous surface area and tends to trap those in low concentration better than those in high concentration. Filter it through a cotton plug in a filter to remove the last traces of charcoal if you do manage to get it clear.

[Alexein]

I didn't see anything about exact measurements and different percentages of vinegar. The video only mentions 1L of vinegar and 84g of NaHCO3 (to my knowledge). Was this extra information located in the "sidebar"? If so, I couldn't figure out how to access it!! Where is this "sidebar"?

 

The video also mentions that the final product may develop a yellow tinge as one removes 9/10ths of the water by way of boiling the solution. If one's "Hot Ice" preparation came out dark yellow in colour, would activated charcoal clear up the solution? (I'm not really sure how that stuff works, I just know it does, sometimes...)

 

Thanks,

CSR

 

Gotta click the "more info" link in the box on the right side of the video. Just under the date and name and just to the right of the "NURD RAGE" icon.

 

As for the color, i'm not quite certain how to clear it up. slow recrystalization might give you highly pure crystals that you can filter off to leave behind the yellow crud.

 

If you're going to go as far as use activated charcoal, i think you might be better off just buying the pure sodium acetate from ebay. you can get it by the bucketload there.

Edited January 22, 2009 by Alexein

[hermanntrude]

yes it's cheap and harmless. I have a big bucket of it in my lab. I love it with all of my heart.

 

But don't tell the potassium i said that. And I've been telling the red phosphorus i'll marry it soon...

[vedmecum]

one can purchase it from chem shop as it is not banned and it is also cheap i got pure sample of sodium acetate from my chem lab and did the same procedure as shown on youtube presentation . but i failed to get such type of ice .

can anybody suggest me what mistake i probably did?

[hermanntrude]

not sure which youtube you're talking about, but here's the procedure I use:

 

1) make sure what you have is sodium acetate trihydrate

 

2) heat up the powder (or crystalline solid) in a beaker, with stirring. when it reaches its melting point (about 60°C) it will dissolve in its own waters of crystallisation. Continue heating and stirring until you have a clear solution with no crystals left.

 

3) allow the solution to cool in a still, calm, quiet place with no dust or shockwaves

 

4) pour the solution out onto a seed crystal (from the original sample) on a watch glass.

 

5) listen while people go "ooo" and "ahhhh"

 

6) feel smug