rocket Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 Sodium is produced in the reaction Mg/NaOH and if you have the container your igniting the comp in pretty well sealed you get tiny ball of sodium, there metallic soft beads of metal and when thrown in water the skip around on the surface hissing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindphreak Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 I attempted sodium not too long ago and I agree with the above posts- any sodium created immediately oxidizes before it can be gathered. However, I did created sodium from NaOh, the only problem was the atmospheric oxygen. What if you covered the NaOh in an inert gas while you were making the sodium? Wouldn't that stop the oxidation?If not, why not invert a second can underneath the molten NaOH and use that as an electrode? If one side is enameled or painted, Na should form in the inverted bowl which can later be extracted. I was planning to do this, but was unsure what paints could resist both the heat needed and the reactivity of the molten NaOH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NightHawkInLight Posted June 27, 2009 Author Share Posted June 27, 2009 A comment posted to my video: "Sodium is more reactive than magnesium. The reason why this reaction occurs, is because of thermodynamics. Basically you get more heat from Mg burning into Mg(OH)2 (or MgO, not sure which one forms there) than needed for getting Na out of NaOH. So the mixture of Mg(OH)2 and Na is thermodynamically more stable than Mg and NaOH." Sounds slightly more reasonable. Still some problems I can think of but it is more within the realm of possibility. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindphreak Posted June 29, 2009 Share Posted June 29, 2009 Hey Nighthawkinlight, earlier you were saying you were having trouble seperating out the sodium from the mass of scrap. You could try melting off the sodium from the slag under mineral oil. Mineral oil boils between 260 and 330C, but sodium melts at only 97.72 °C. If you were to heat it up a bit past 100 C, I bet you could get a pool of sodium underneath the slag. Isolation of the sodium element would also verify this method of obtaining the metal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumbles Posted June 29, 2009 Share Posted June 29, 2009 What about forming an amalgam with mercury to extract the Na, and distilling the mercury off, to at least prove the reaction? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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