Potassium Chlorate from Bleach
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- See my blog for the Companion post for this video, which has a writeup for those who prefer reading: thehomescientis...
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Today I'll be making potassium chlorate from bleach. It's a very simple procedure, but the tradeoff is that it isn't very efficient. Electrolysis is a better method, and I'll visit that in a later video.
Here's the procedure. Start with 500mL of regular old bleach, and boil it down until crystals just start forming. Remove from heat, and let cool. Prepare a saturated solution of potassium chloride that is the same volume as the boiled bleach solution. Add the two together, and crystals of KClO3 should precipitate. If they don't, refrigerate the solution. Even if you do get immediate precipitation, cooling the solution will increase your yield.
I can watch hours of chemistry videos and not get bored.
Same
Wow I forgot I even watched this... 8 years later I still haven't gotten bored 😂
Of course you wont. Chemistry is amazing!
Wow, a lot of time has passed my friend.
Especially NileRed videos
If you dont mind, i have some non requested sugestions:
- When you see NaCl cristals forming in the bleach, add more water, so you'll need to heat it more and increase the NaClO3 forming and also decreasing the contamination of your final product by hypoclorite (dangerous if you are using it for explosives).
- When mixing the two saturated solutions you can also boil it until cristals start to form, then you can leave it to cool in the freezer and therefore squeeze more product.
Thanks a lot! I'm not a teacher, though I do co-host a science stage show for elementary kids through my work. Almost all of my chemistry knowledge is self-taught. Just sitting down and reading a lot about the subject, then going out and trying things myself!
Great sir
How do you get the supplies tho? I need sodium or potassium chlorate for my science project but I can't find it anywhere
@@MillaGoat In this video is recipe of it, KClO3, but beware of this stuff, cuz its easy to explode, and sensitive to any kind of compressing.
OMG! First I saw your melting aluminium video and when I watched this I recognised the voice and found out it was you again! DUDE YOU ARE ON MY AWESOMENESS RADAR!!!
+Hooverblox Huzzah!
Gaydar
mrhomescientist wazza
Hooverblox
Hooverblox awesomeness radar?
Sounds like a 5 year old no offence
your giggle when it burns confirms my notion that you're a happy pyro :)
Hudda hudda hudda!
The only side effect of pyrotechnical reactions is Perma grinning, and laughter, I think it has much to do with the child in all of us, and also the fact that you just can't detonate something(in a controlled environment) without giggles and smiles, the bigger the reaction, the bigger the smiles and giggles.
This is even the case with those who do this all the time, old lab guys simply can't make a good pyrotechnical reaction without letting out a giggle and a huge smile on our faces.
Take care Friend, always nice to see someone notice the same thing as I have.😀
The only reason I'm on this video is to make military explosives lol
the giggle after the test :D i know how rewarding it is when it goes off :P
There is always a major side effect from doing pyrotechnics. It's called perma grinning, laughing and it is simply unavoidable, even those who do this for a living, still have a big smile on their faces when they set off a detonation or a chemical reaction that causes a major pyrotechnical result.
Take care my Friend, always a joy to learn, and have the type of fun that to be honest is "good clean fun" if we are using our heads.😂
Oha, du hier
I love that chuckle at the end of the reaction lol
I swear to god its like the tell tale sign of a manic pyro.
If you're watching this video than you have been there.
I just finished making some potassium chloride and sodium chlorite mixture and it's currently in the fridge. Not 100% sure it will turn out well, but there seem to be some solids collecting on the bottom, so that's good.
I can confirm that it has to be regular bleach without any scent, since the bubbles and other impurities prevent the NaCl crystals from forming during boiling. There are definitely fumes that come off, and if you don't have a fume hood, you should definitely do this outside. I was able to get sodium chlorite from my bleach by using a ceramic type glass in a campfire, and even though it had a small amount of ash that floated in, using a coffee filter made it appear as clear as it does in the video.
I also didn't have any precipitate upon the initial mixing, so don't be too discouraged if you do this experiment and don't get an instant return.
Hope this helps!
Wow😱, I'm amazed
This reaction was my first test in General Chemistry 1 earlier this year(due to the pandemic I never got the chance to practically understand it). Thank you Sir. The feeling of satisfaction I get when I finally understand something reminds me why I love chemistry.
What would happen if 66 cows were to ingest this?
D E A T H
Whenever I'm making any crystals like this whether it's potassium chlorate or ammonium nitrate I like to put my final solution into a pan with alot if surface area to give the crystals more room to grow but this was a great video
Glad to get a second opinion on my math :) I definitely think I could have improved the yield if I hadn't used so much water for my KCl solution.
How do you get your audio quality to be so bad?
I saw all the comments about the "lough". I had no idea, had to replay a couple of times. Loved it!
It does! To me it tastes more salty than regular salt. I only bought it for science use though :) Potassium chlorate is much less soluble than sodium chlorate, so you're able to separate it from the NaCl easily.
its odd how they promote lo-salt as healthy yet it sets off a geiger counter
@@noimnotarobotcanubeleiveit7024 that’s because it’s made of potassium….
How do you think about use the 12.5% of sodium hypochlorite bleach instead of 8.5% regular house hold bleach to make potassium chlorate?
It's chloride - NaCl. Sodium chlorate is very soluble and remains in solution, which is why we add KCl to the solution to get out the much less soluble potassium chlorate. It's possible that if the bleach is boiled down too much you could get some sodium chlorate precipitation, which is why you want to remove it from heat as soon as crystals start appearing.
It has an important use as a chemical oxygen generator, used in space stations, aircraft, and submarines. It decomposes into oxygen and KCl on fairly gentle heating, so it's an easy source of the gas. It's also much more compact than storing pressurized O2 tanks. It's also, of course, a powerful oxidizer, and can be used in other chemistry that requires such things.
Very good video. Thanks for the excellent information and presentation. I like how you went through 100% to the end to show both reactions, with the more pure precipitation and the less impure sludge precipitation.
4:36 That laugh at the end :D
I like those videos, even though I don't have anything to do with chemistry.
Your voice is so friendly :D
And chemistry is awesome.
Maybe my calculations are off, but 9g seems like a reasonable yield considering the process. There were over 40g of hypochlorite, but that leaves only 13g of chlorate after heating, for a nominal yield of 15g of KClO3. 56% yield is better than a poke in the eye.
Why do you boil me:(
Where would the nitrate come from though? All I used was bleach and potassium chloride. It's possible there was some contamination, but I don't think there'd be enough of it for as many needle crystals as I saw.
Yeah I agree. I haven't tried it yet, but I did keep the contaminated product so it couldn't hurt to try it out. Won't have time to do much for the next few weeks, but electrolysis should follow soon after!
From 2024. Remember: chlorine gas reacts with an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide and the first products are sodium hypochlorite and sodium chloride, while temperature raises.
So heating a solution of sodium hypochlorite allows the inverse reaction: NaCl + NaClO -> NaOH + Cl2 (1).
Even if you have a pure NaClO solution the following equilibrium exists: NaClO + H2O NaOH + HClO (2) and very unstable acid 2HClO 2HCl + O2 (3) and HCl + NaOH NaCl + H2O (4).
So every conditions for (1) are present.
Perhaps it's more effective dropping a concentrated sodium hydroxide solution.
Do you think if you let the solution cool down very slowly in the recrystallization process that you might get more yield..? I herd somewhere that the slower a solution cools down the more crystals form... Don't know if it's true.. Any thoughts...?
Hm, I come up with 41.25g hypochlorite to start, then 19.65g sodium chlorate after disproportionation, and a theoretical yield of 22.6g potassium chlorate at the end. Then 9g is about a 40% yield. Check the link in the description for my blog post with some more details. I'm not sure where our math differs. I used 8.25 wt.% of bleach to start. In either case it's not an abysmal yield, but the electrolysis method is much better from what I hear. I'll need to try it out.
Can I disolve Calcium Hypochlorite (pool chlorine) on water and do the same procedure? Would it work? Since both are hipochlorites?
Enjoy the influx of views on this. It is part of a national trial team competition.
What if you used the powdered bleach shock instead of liquid bleach?
I think pool supply stores sell concentrated sodium hypochlorite as liquid pool shocker. It is usually sold in gallon size tan jugs. Though I could be wrong and it's an entirely different compound.
They do! Just be sure to read the labels carefully; there's a huge variety of pool chemicals so make sure you know what you're getting.
Lool at the end the ant is happy that the second batch dident start to burn :D, nice way of explaining it, respect.
Men my blech have, 50 gr of chlorine of 1 liter. It is work?
50 grains? are you sure that's even bleach?
@@pacman10182 grams not grains
@@spoonerman gr is grains, g is grams
@@pacman10182 People type gr for grams despite not being correct. Also the guy is from Europe i doubt he uses grains.
@@spoonerman even more reason for me to make fun of him
Formation of chlorate is favorable at low ph. Bleach typically has a ph of 11 or so. Decrease ph with HCL to about 6.5. This increases efficiency and has the added benefit of decreasing chlorine off gassing during the boiling process. Ph may raise while boiling. Adjust as necessary.
Chlorine would sure offgas before the boil! But that's an interesting idea to try, thanks for the comment.
mrhomescientist for sure. Gradual/dilute is a good idea. Thanks for the video! This chemistry is always so entertaining.
You sir, deserve more subscribers and views!
Another question...
Is the precipitate (from the initial boiled bleach) completely sodium chloride, with no sodium chlorate in the precipitate? Could you increase the yield of crystals by, perhaps adding some water, re-dissolve the salts into the solution and THEN add the potassium chloride solution?
There's probably at least some chlorate in it, but the vast majority should be chloride. The chlorate is much more soluble and should remain in solution. Your idea would probably work, but I don't think the increase in yield would be very significant. Remember also that adding more water will dissolve more of your desired product!
4:40 HEHEUAHEUHAHEHEHEH
moody5599 lol
I was going to say that
🤣🤣🤣🤣lllolololololololol
That manic pyro giggle tho
Thanks! A lot of my equipment is from eBay or various other online sellers, as well as buying from other chemistry hobbyists. A fume hood is definitely preferable, and necessary for some experiments - until I get one I do many of my reactions outside, preferably when it's windy.
I got plate-like crystals nearly immediately after adding the Potassium Chloride. I put the solution in the fridge. I collected crystals so far nearly catch fire as described, but there is a little too much water. Worked well. Only problem was that I left my hotplate unattended too long and had no liquid in the bleach left. I just added water until it was saturated.
Camroc37 Good work!
mrhomescientist Thanks, but is there a simpler way to get potassium chlorate?
I have Potassium Dichromate if that gives you any ideas. No-Salt is pricey to use!
Camroc37 Well the other route is electrolysis of KCl; much simpler if you can make a cell. You could also try using displacement of another chlorate salt, like calcium sulfate and barium chlorate, but I imagine that's even more expensive.
Very helpful video sir
Which bleach to use for this experiment
Well that was pretty cool, short, simple and to the point. Nice!
Just kinda curious say what if ya boost your chloride say add some salt can street salt work or does it have to be no salt
A car battery's acid is only about 30%, nowhere near the point where you can call it concentrated. You could of course boil the water off, but that takes a while and boiling acid isn't very friendly. Mine was liquid drain opener, and is 98% acid.
your laugh makes my day
Not too bad. Might be a little expensive in time and $, but the chemicals are stuff that you can get, likely, right now at the local food mart.
hello! I was just wondering if you have tried using Pool Brite Sanitizer Liquid Disinfectant? it has the same properties as bleach except it is 12.5% Sodium Hyperchlorite. I was able to yield twice as much and a higher chance of high purity Chlorate from the pool brite than the 8.25% bleach. You should give it a try if you get a chance!
4:40 that was such a genuine laugh, i love it
Is it better for a bleaching has a bigger or smaller% sodium hypochloride?
Great video! I just wanted to mention you MUST use glass to boil the bleach. If you use metal you will get side reactions that will ruin your synthesis and you won't get any product. I am sure there is some type of metal that you can use, but I tried a few and they didn't work. Does anyone know what type metal will not ruin the experiment? I want to go large and metal is more practical.
maybe teflon?????? don't take my word for it tho
You can get 40lbs of pure KCL at ACE or LOWES for around $25. Great video, I can't wait to see you try electrolysis, it's so fun and exciting when you see those crystals fall out, great feeling.
just take your second crystal lot, dissolve in the minimum amount of fairly hoy water to just disolve it all,then allow to cool slowly to room temp, decant,get crystals,then put left over liquid in the fridge to get last bit out...well, thats the usual method to attempt full recovery....also,during your first step, try to prolong that boiling,adding water to replace any lost.
so what will be cheaper to get kcio3 from matches or bleach?
Do you have a video to do this using electrolysis?
Is the crystal left after boiling the bleach pure sodium chloride?
Is a higher or lower% of sodium hypochlorite in bleach better to get potassium chlorate?
I boiled bleach but there are no crystals forming Idk why
I never considered an acid to start the flame - I use the chlorate for making colored smoke bombs, and the idea of having a small ampule inside that breaks and starts the reaction when you "throw" the grenade seems appealing (although, not safe at all - the pull tabs I use now are much safer).
On your second crystallization that yielded an impure batch of crystal, is there a method of selective solubilization that could be used separate the potassium chlorate from the other salts, such as heated ethanol?
Here, low sodium salt are actually a 50/50 mix of sodium or potasium salt... with this: If I add first this salt mix to the bleach and then boile it later: Does it will improve the potassium chlorate yield?...thinking about the extra sodium salt added could balance the reaction into producing chlorates since there already too much chloride ions inside.. is this right?... or it doesn't works this way?
Our math differs because I messed up my sodium chlorate calculation :) I went back and did it again and got the same numbers that you have posted.
Thanks! Found liquid fire at ace hardware. Pretty pure stuff, though it does have quite a bit of carbon/organic impurities. :(
It depends on the experiment, but on average I'd say it's at least a full day of doing the experiment (mixing things, waiting to filter or boil, etc.) and then a few hours editing the video clips together. Even simple things tend to take quite a while to set up, perform, and break down. Good catch on the spill, whoops :P
It can also be used to turn potassium iodide into potassium iodate, which can be used for titrations.
Can I use KNO3 instead of KCl precipitate the KCLO3? I mean I provide the K+ ion so I don't see why I can't, or do I need the common Cl- ion?
How much power do you need to melt down the KClO3? Is any regular flame hot enough? The reason I'm asking is because I wanted to try the gummy bear KClO3 lab, but I didn't want to have to buy KClO3 as no one near me sells it.
is kclo3 safer to leave wet with h2o when storing ?
Would boiling the bleach under high pressure to reach higher temperatures make the disproportioning more efficient?
That's an excellent question! My first thought is yes, higher temperature would speed up the reaction rate and at might force it to completion faster and more completely.
@@mrhomescientist Thank you for replying! Do you think you could try this out and see if you get better yields? Maybe it'll become a semi-efficient way of making KClO3. I made some KClO3 this way and didn't get much at all, so maybe this will help out. I was planning on trying this but I currently don't have the equipment to do this. I might have to rig some copper tubing up and give it a shot.
Can you use potassium hydroxide instead of potassium chloride?
I wonder if using pool chlorine would give a higher yield. I expect it has higher percentage sodium hydrochloride than domestic bleach as a precursor.
At what temperature did you boil the bleach? What was the temperature of the bleach solution when you took it off the heat? How long did you have it on the heat for? FYI. I used Jik 3,5% m/v Sodium Hypochlorite solution.
I didn't measure the temperature, but surely it was near 100 C. I simply held it at that point until crystals started forming, I don't recall how long that was. It sounds like you did everything right, but your bleach solution is pretty dilute. How much did you start with? 500mL of my 8.25% solution produced very little yield, so you'd probably need over a liter to get anything worthwhile from yours.
Thanks. I got very little but it worked.
700ml
Awesome video. I need to learn more on chemistry and your videos are a great source of inspiration. I first started watching you with your sand to thermite video (dash bit of a pyro) and every since I have been loving your videos, even if I don't fully get all of them :3
Can it be ignited by a match or a fuse?
Hi, Have a good Day, Please you can explain how to make sodium chlorite = NaClO2? 🤔
Thank you for balancing that for us.
I don't know much about chemistry, I did horribly with it in HS, so please bear this in mind when I ask: Is there a way you can "seed" the crystal formulation somehow to increase yield?
Sure, if you have some solid potassium chlorate already you can throw it in to kickstart crystal formation. But it won't increase yield any. It just makes it a bit easier to grow them.
what do you do whit the christals that form in the beginning when you filterd it?
Throw them away. It's just salt.
"Now I'm going to test it out... crackle, fizzle... GIGGETTY!"
You have to boil it a certain way not to release the chlorine gas, right?
Did you end up attempting any recrystallization, and if so did you get any additional product? I mean sure, given the chemicals were just household bleach and salt substitute, but I hate to see waste on a certain level. Anyway, love the videos, looking forward to the electrolysis version.
Interesting, and yeah I enjoyed that. The first batch of crystals from the boiling bleach, are these not useable for further precipitation?
Well the first crystals to appear are just table salt. That's why we filter them off.
When cooling in the fridge yes, the chlorate will fall out first. But the crystals he was talking about, the ones that appeared right as I stopped boiling, are actually NaCl from disproportionation of the bleach. There's so much of it at this stage that the solution is saturated at room temperature.
so then what IS the solution once the NaCl is removed?
this is something I have been thinking about so as to reuse the solution if possible. Reboil as is but instead of just trying to pull more KCL out simply repeat the entire process!
Going by the equation I posted in the video, the solution after boiling consists of even more NaCl, sodium chlorate, and likely some unreacted bleach. You'd only be able to reuse the solution up to the point where all the bleach is consumed. It depends on how well you boil it.
How do you know how much potassium chloride to add?
Mix those crystals (the purer ones) with equal weight amount of 90% melted beeswax/10% vaseline, cool in blocks and add a blast cap and you've got yourself homemade plastic explosive. Just saying...
Or one could add the right fuel to it and you have a high explosive, Ive always used a large floating steel bowl in a dry ice bath that you would drip into, There are also easier and faster ways to scrounge up chlorate without any chemistry, you just know where to look
🤫
it works with perchlorate
No, this would not work. You have to prepare an ammoniacal solution of copper(I) ion, and pass the acetylene through that. I've done this many times, could possibly upload a video on it if you want.
Please
Can I use ammonium bicarbonate instead of KCL? To make ammonium chlorate. Does it works?
Seems like it will. However ammonium chlorate is much more soluble than potassium chlorate, so it will be harder to isolate.
@@mrhomescientist hmm ok. do you have any sugestions for me to isolate it properly?
can we froze it instead to get crystals or some type of electrolysis?
what was the substance in your second attempt?
Can I skip the addition of KCl and evaporating the resulting filtrate to make NaClO3 instead?
+Johnpao215 I don't think it's quite that simple. It would be very heavily contaminated with sodium chloride; there's a lot still in solution even after you filter off what precipitates after boiling. I think it's generally made using electrolysis. But it's much easier to make the potassium salt, and KCl should be easy to find locally as a sodium-free salt substitute, water softener, or road de-icer.
so, i have a bottle of chlorine bleach crystals. is that more useful for this?
Different chemical, unfortunately.
Can we go through this again
W Harris
Please excuse my ignorance, what would it take, or is it possible to turn that into a perchlorate?
I have never made perchlorate myself, but from what I hear it's quite a bit more involved to make than this. I know that going the electrolysis route you need special electrodes to be able to produce it.
Could be dangerous as well but an interesting idea!
***** I really don't think that would work. Making perchlorates via electrolysis isn't too much harder than making chlorates, but you have to maintain a very high temperature to keep much potassium chlorate in solution.
Hmm, what brand do you use? I have never seen any brand of liquid drain opener containing sulfuric acid.
I can't get Potassium Chloride where I live, can I use Potassium Hydroxide instead?
Could you do a video extracting the Potassium Chlorate through electrolysis? I'd love to understand the science behind it.
Did you achieve alchemy or nuclear conversion of sodium to potassium? They do have some properties in common, but they’re not the same thing!
so what is this element used for? how is it turned into an explosive
You should do a video on electrolysis dude. I hate using this method because the work required for this is hardly worth the yield. No chemistry experiment is useless or boring in my opinion, but my god, the time you put into the whole process makes the low yield a little depressing haha. Mind you I am not criticizing your video, I'm speaking from first hand experience. But if someone wants to try this, by all means. It is a fun and relatively straightforward little project to do at home, not to mention fairly cheap and moderately safe if the proper precautions are taken (:
I understand, it's certainly time consuming. Electrolysis takes quite a bit longer, but at least you aren't actively involved the whole time. This method has its merits for people that don't have access to electrolysis gear. I have done electrolysis and it seems to be quite a good route too, I just didn't have the time to film it. I'll get on that one of these days!
mrhomescientist Yeah I think the electrolysis method takes, what, 3 or 4 days? But like you said, at least you can just set it up and let it do its own thing for the most part. Very little interaction needed after its began. Oh and I also wanted to say I actually just got done giving this method another shot (3 hours ago) with a few modifications. I wanted to see if I could come up with a way to make it a little more efficient for future reference. It worked!...Kinda lol. I think the total yield was about 64 percent of the theoretical yield. I've found if you boil down 500ml of bleach to about 250ml, then add an additional 250ml of fresh bleach and boil back down to 250ml it will increase your yield greatly. For some reason it seemed to produce 3 times more KClO3 than starting with 750ml. And with this method I used stoichiometric amounts of each chemical. No need for a saturated KCl solution. So it wasted less KCl :D
What is that glass bowl called you're using to boil the bleach?
It's called an evaporating dish - very handy to have, especially for slowly evaporating solutions because it has such a large surface area.
that laugh when you lit it earned you my sub
i know this is an old video and you might not respond but what did you use as a filter? i am told usually its just cupcake sheets but idk...
I use 2-4 coffee filters, depending on how fine the precipitate is.
mrhomescientist ok thanks! i made an acid with peroxide vinegar and salt i forget what its called because im not really good at remembering :/ but i dissolved steel wool into it and i need to filter the iron oxide will these work? sorry if this made no sense i haven't gotten any sleep in like 2 days from guests and working..
Sure, coffee filters work for just about everything I use. The only time they've failed me is if the precipitate is super fine. In that case, just keep re-filtering the cloudy liquid through the same filters. The pores get blocked up and it slowly clears up. Oh and the acid you made is Hypochlorous Acid, or HClO. Hardware store muriatic acid also works great for dissolving iron, yielding FeCl2.
Okay. So what is Potassium Chlorate normally used for?