Hi guys, perhaps you are unaware of it but some few years ago Canadian chemist "nurdrage" discovered a superb new method for the production of pure sodium metal using nothing but NaOH, pure mineral oil, magnesium turnings, and a couple grams of menthol. The reaction is done at low temperatures, never exceeding 200C, and has fantastically high yields in the 90+% range. The technique reportedly works the same and just as well for potassium. Search for the title here of "Make Sodium Metal with Menthol" and you will find the final summation of a series of his videos on the subject where he experiments with other catalysts like tea tree oil.
nurdrage also did make a potassium synthesis way before the sodium which used tetrahydronapthalene KOH magnesium powder and catalytic tertiary alcohol but the video is deleted
That apparatus can be used to distill white phosphorus from a phosphorus salt, aluminum powder and silicon dioxide as a Flux. There's a whole long thread on sciencemadness about it.
Wonderfully mad chemistry going on- and that's just between the chemists. One of the guys behind the camera has exactly the same voice as one of the characters created by Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan for The Goon Show.
Haha thank you! I know them from people telling me that I sound like Inspector Clouseau or Dr. Strangelove both played by Peter Sellers XD Much more rarely I have been compared to Werner Herzog.
@@EliasExperiments thanks 😊 hopefully I'll make some progress on that soon. Btw if yourself, thy labs and co. decide to do any more big outdoor experiments, I volunteer to come out to Germany. I think having use of my new drone would be good to both capture good angles and as an aerial release mechanism 😁
Where can I get a diagram of the still? Seems like its a bit different than a standard still.. But is it? I'd love it if you filled me in on the details. Thanks.
I absolutely love the part when you wrapped the teflon pipe tape on the threads in the wrong direction and proceed to say to yur buddy, "Every plumber will get an aneurysm watching me seal those threads." LOL! So true. Then the part where you guys are talking about how tight to tighten the metal to glass transition clamp.. it gets tightened one turn too tight and crack! look of defeat all over his face, other guy laughing hard. Let me suggest for next time.. use a rubber washer on the apparatus before beginning to tighten it down, or a spring on the bolt to act in the same way that a rubber washer would. Allows you to snug it up tight without getting to the point where the glass is going to crack. If there is no part of the system that can elastically deform like this, there is no possible way to get the thing actually tightened up. It will inevitably have some play in it. Another solution is to wrap the joint with a strip of leather or rubber before putting the clamp overtop of it. Then the clamp can compress the leather / rubber onto the glass and won't crack the glass. Anyways.. Watch all these plumbers lose their cool as I do an upper decker in the toilet at the local coffee shop and wait to hear the next person go in the washroom to use the toilet. They come out and tell the cashier what happened when they flushed. I listen to the conversation while trying not to bust a gut with laughter. Watch them both go into the washroom to see what's going on. Watch them both come out with disgusted looks on faces. Win. Sorry not sorry to the plumber who's gotta fix the issue. :)
Do you think Sodium metal and slag could be made if a very coarse mixture of sodium hydroxide and magnesium(chunky) is slowly heated in a container with a small hole ontop to prevent air from getting in. I saw that when you put magnesium in molten potassium hydroxide it spontaneously caught on fire. So i'm thinking that this reaction was happening without having to light it like the method where you make sodium by burning a mixture of sodium hydroxide and magnesium.
The reaction between KOH and Mg lights at temperatures around 150 °C, so quite easily for a solid mixture like that. It is quite similar to the reaction of NaOH with Mg.
@@EliasExperiments I just melted a small amount of sodium hydroxide and put some magnesium strip into it. It did not spontaneously combust and did not fully react as the strips are still there.
Doesn't this reaction run away uncontrollably? I have seen this done in a soup can & flames pour out the top violently splattering the contents about. How did you keep the still from exploding?
The reason was this was done on a small scale and under vacuum. And in this video you can clearly see how it boiled over. In my newest video you can see an improved process using potassium carbonate
@@EliasExperiments Could you pre-roast the K2CO3 to get K2O & then use that for your potassium-bearing reactant? Doing this would eliminate all gas emissions (like thermite reaction) that would eliminate all "blowing" that results in loss of potassium? Steps would be: put K2CO3 in retort. Put retort in oven at red-heat & vacuum it. Then partially cool. Add magnesium turnings. Reheat & vacuum to react & distill the potassium. This would separate the gas-generating step from the potassium reduction step.
What you are suggesting might work with KNO3, but certainly not with K2CO3, because the decomposition temperature is far too high. I might try it with KNO3 in the future.
@@EliasExperiments What about using KCl as the source of potassium? Would that (thoroughly dehydrated) react with magnesium, without being violent & without evolving gas?
The thing with KCl is, that the reaction is really slow and both KCl and Mg start boiling at the temperature it is reacting. So you would need an apparatus, that could reflux KCl and Mg, which is more difficult to do.
I was looking around the house. Damn, I am all out of potassium metal. I log on to youtube.... Why buy my potassium metal when I can make my own at home?
I can so relate to the ‘be careful not to over-tighten xxxxxx or it will break……a few seconds later… 𝒄𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒌!…. 🤦♂️🙄’ thing. Been there..broke that…didn’t like it.
Danke Dir für das Angebot. Schreib mir doch bitte diesbezüglich eine Mail, dass wir besser kommunizieren können. Diese findest Du in der About Section auf meinem Kanal.
Hey Elias once again! its funny you made this video, right now, I'm trying to make calcium metal using this same type of setup, but with calcium chloride and aluminum metal. the aluminum metal forms aluminum chloride which boils off leaving behind calcium metal. I have yet to dry my calcium chloride though, I got it by refining wood ash to get lime, and putting it in muriatic acid to get calcium chloride, so its still dissolved in a tray of water. wish me luck! also, any advice?
Oh wow that sounds highly ambitions. I am not sure this is easily possible with temperatures not far exceeding 1000 °C. But if it works, that would be absolutely incredible. But if you can make it work, I would be highly impressed! I would certainly advise you to just buy the anhydrous calcium chloride. It is very cheap and what you are planning is more then difficult enough, so you basically need any leverage you can get.
@@EliasExperiments I agree, but I've always felt like buying the ingredients is kind of cheating, so I try to avoid it. but I guess you're right, since this is my first attempt, I probably should have just bought some... anyway, the reaction will take place in a short steel pipe with a cap on one end (the bottom), and a small hole on the other (the top) to let gas escape. I coated the inside with a small amount of oil, which will burn off the oxygen inside the chamber once I put it in the furnace, and it will also seal up the threads with carbon soot (the tiny hole at the top will still be open). it will also coat the inside of the pipe with a layer of carbon soot which should help protect the steel from the reaction and molten metals inside. any advice, worries or concerns are much appreciated!
If you consider buying anything cheating I guess it might as well be impossible for you to do this without cheating in our society lol. Because you always have to buy something. I mean what's the difference between buying muriatic acid, or calcium chloride? Besides that I am not sure if this reaction actually does occur to any significant degree below the melting point of steel. I mean it is worth a shot and you really have to make it as hot as you possibly can. I can't wait to hear your results!
@@EliasExperiments I meant to reply back a few days later once I had the results, but I had forgotten! *here are the results of the experiment:* the final result was slightly successful, but looked quite messy, and the preparation could have been done better. I was left with a jumbled mess of metal pieces and unreacted calcium chloride, and it smelled like garlic or like sulfur, so I figured that either that's simply the smell of aluminum chloride, or that the oil I used has some sulfur in it. next I placed it in water to dissolve the calcium chloride, and all that was left was the remaining metal pieces, which were probably mostly aluminum, but they still did barely bubble in water, which is consistent with them being calcium dissolved in aluminum metal. aluminum makes a passivation layer, and would protect the calcium within, even if it was high in calcium, the aluminum oxide passivation would get in the way. one of the pieces is particularly rough in texture, and it bubbles just slightly every time I put it in water, I even held the dish of water up to my ear, and could hear the little bubbles popping. there wasn't enough to do a hydrogen gas flammability test though. my recommendations for repeating this: aluminum should have high surface area such as a fine powder, and the same for the calcium chloride, and they should be thoroughly mixed in their stoichiometric ratio (CaCl2 6.17 : Al 1). I should have just bought the calcium chloride from the store. I should have made sure that the aluminum didn't have a significant passivation layer present when I put it into the reaction chamber, I think it slowed the reaction. I should have used less oil, or simply not used steel which needs protection, instead it would have been best to use a graphite crucible. I should have let the experiment run for longer as well. I think the temperature was about right though it was around 1,500F to 1,900F. I would also recommend using fairly pure aluminum and calcium chloride. make sure to keep oxygen out of the reaction chamber, but you also need to let any aluminum chloride vapor escape because that is the reason the reaction works, one product is a gas, so it escapes and forces the reaction to continue. also make sure most of the moisture is driven out before starting the reaction, and keep in mind that calcium chloride is ridiculously hygroscopic.
Oh awesome! Thank you so much for sharing that! I mean the obvious next step would be to try again with the improvents you suggested. That's how it is in chemistry, you just need to keep trying and trying until you get what you want.
Hi guys, perhaps you are unaware of it but some few years ago Canadian chemist "nurdrage" discovered a superb new method for the production of pure sodium metal using nothing but NaOH, pure mineral oil, magnesium turnings, and a couple grams of menthol. The reaction is done at low temperatures, never exceeding 200C, and has fantastically high yields in the 90+% range. The technique reportedly works the same and just as well for potassium. Search for the title here of "Make Sodium Metal with Menthol" and you will find the final summation of a series of his videos on the subject where he experiments with other catalysts like tea tree oil.
nurdrage also did make a potassium synthesis way before the sodium which used tetrahydronapthalene KOH magnesium powder and catalytic tertiary alcohol but the video is deleted
iirc mineral oil alone didn't work so well and it needed ultra-dry pure dioxane, too.
that was only for the final step of removing magnesium oxide from sodium metal, in theory you could get away with using none
He also used tea tree oil
it ended up being too laborious to use but yeah it did work i think
Every time I come for the chemistry but what really makes me stay is how much fun you guys are having. Love the cynical sarcastic laughter and stuff.
Thank you for the kind feedback!
I've been really wanting to distill alkali metals for a while now, nice to see it works with just magnesium and the hydroxide!
That's cool, yeah it is really cool that it works. Maybe we can develop an even better process.
That apparatus can be used to distill white phosphorus from a phosphorus salt, aluminum powder and silicon dioxide as a Flux. There's a whole long thread on sciencemadness about it.
Maybe that's a project for another day! ;-)
I just found out about your channel and I can firmly say that it's incredibly underrated! You deserve much more than what the algorithm gives you!
Thank you so much! I think I am doing fine, as soon as I will upload some more videos, I am sure it will all grow quite well.
All this time I thought Death Metal was some kind of music.
Haha if a metal should be called death metal potassium would be a hot candidate XD
Next time try KOH + Aluminium powder....this requires 800*C + temperature
There is a good chance that we might actually try this, because the plan is to scale this up and the reaction with mg it too vigorous for that.
@@EliasExperimentsWould love to see a part two of this series! You guys work well together and are great to watch.
Nurdrage had a pretty interesting series about making sodium metal, only with no fire...
Yes I have seen it. It is really cool, but we are working on something that can be scaled up more easily. :D
Sense of humor is top notch 😂😂😂
Thank you!
5:02 thank God we had some grease in there.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
You guys make it a learning experience and hilarious at the same time. Great video guys!
Haha I am glad you like it! Thank you for the feedback :-)
watching German backyard chemists fuck around is so entertaining!
Thank you! ;-)
I can picture him say "Yes, I'll do it!" , to anything destructive. LOL You're awesome bro!
Thank you so much for your kind words!
That's a great process I'll have to try that!
I wish you the best of luck!
Wonderfully mad chemistry going on- and that's just between the chemists. One of the guys behind the camera has exactly the same voice as one of the characters created by Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan for The Goon Show.
Do you mean me? People tell me that somewhat frequently XD
Honestly? Wow! You know them? I'm impressed. I'm clearly on the right channel. @@EliasExperiments
Haha thank you! I know them from people telling me that I sound like Inspector Clouseau or Dr. Strangelove both played by Peter Sellers XD Much more rarely I have been compared to Werner Herzog.
5:15 pity you had to sacrifice your bong.
Well sh*t happens XD
Really nice guys, I'll be trying myself to make glass kf25 flange and cesium potassium collecting apparatus very soon. Everything else is built
Good luck with that!
@@EliasExperiments thanks 😊 hopefully I'll make some progress on that soon.
Btw if yourself, thy labs and co. decide to do any more big outdoor experiments, I volunteer to come out to Germany. I think having use of my new drone would be good to both capture good angles and as an aerial release mechanism 😁
Where can I get a diagram of the still? Seems like its a bit different than a standard still.. But is it? I'd love it if you filled me in on the details. Thanks.
You have to ask Advanced Tinkering about it, he made it.
I came here from Advanced Tinkering. Love you guys!
Thank you!
I love hearing you guys laughing! A great stress release and obviously having a lot of fun at the sake time😂
Thank you for the kind feedback ;-)
its a lot of fun watching you two, you are the best duo so far, the pure ironical antagonism going on lol
Haha yes indeed it is always a lot of fun "working" in this combination. There will be a lot more to come!
I absolutely love the part when you wrapped the teflon pipe tape on the threads in the wrong direction and proceed to say to yur buddy, "Every plumber will get an aneurysm watching me seal those threads." LOL! So true.
Then the part where you guys are talking about how tight to tighten the metal to glass transition clamp.. it gets tightened one turn too tight and crack! look of defeat all over his face, other guy laughing hard. Let me suggest for next time.. use a rubber washer on the apparatus before beginning to tighten it down, or a spring on the bolt to act in the same way that a rubber washer would. Allows you to snug it up tight without getting to the point where the glass is going to crack. If there is no part of the system that can elastically deform like this, there is no possible way to get the thing actually tightened up. It will inevitably have some play in it. Another solution is to wrap the joint with a strip of leather or rubber before putting the clamp overtop of it. Then the clamp can compress the leather / rubber onto the glass and won't crack the glass.
Anyways.. Watch all these plumbers lose their cool as I do an upper decker in the toilet at the local coffee shop and wait to hear the next person go in the washroom to use the toilet. They come out and tell the cashier what happened when they flushed. I listen to the conversation while trying not to bust a gut with laughter. Watch them both go into the washroom to see what's going on. Watch them both come out with disgusted looks on faces. Win. Sorry not sorry to the plumber who's gotta fix the issue. :)
Oh wow that is actually a really good suggestion, thank you so much for that!
Thanks for sharing, this was hilarious and impressive! I can't wait to try one day.
Thank you so much for the feedback!
Making potassium metal at home. Wife: "Have you seen the 10,000 lb. of Bananas that I bought yesterday?"
Lol that would be incredibly impractical :D
I think I saw some oil being sucked back into the hose....
Nice video! It was a pleasure!
Haha lol. It was indeed a great pleasure! I hope we can produce a lot more videos like that together!
Ihr zwei seid so eine Nummer! Die Komik gefällt mir immer!
Haha, danke Dir!
so, germans decided to make some potassium....
Haha, exactly! :D
Do you think Sodium metal and slag could be made if a very coarse mixture of sodium hydroxide and magnesium(chunky) is slowly heated in a container with a small hole ontop to prevent air from getting in. I saw that when you put magnesium in molten potassium hydroxide it spontaneously caught on fire. So i'm thinking that this reaction was happening without having to light it like the method where you make sodium by burning a mixture of sodium hydroxide and magnesium.
The reaction between KOH and Mg lights at temperatures around 150 °C, so quite easily for a solid mixture like that. It is quite similar to the reaction of NaOH with Mg.
@@EliasExperiments I just melted a small amount of sodium hydroxide and put some magnesium strip into it. It did not spontaneously combust and did not fully react as the strips are still there.
Wow thank you for trying that! That's really interesting! I have no idea how to explain that.
that is pretty neat!
Thank you!
Wrong direction with thread tape
Lol better tell that Advanced Tinkering :D
Doesn't this reaction run away uncontrollably? I have seen this done in a soup can & flames pour out the top violently splattering the contents about. How did you keep the still from exploding?
The reason was this was done on a small scale and under vacuum. And in this video you can clearly see how it boiled over. In my newest video you can see an improved process using potassium carbonate
@@EliasExperiments Could you pre-roast the K2CO3 to get K2O & then use that for your potassium-bearing reactant? Doing this would eliminate all gas emissions (like thermite reaction) that would eliminate all "blowing" that results in loss of potassium? Steps would be: put K2CO3 in retort. Put retort in oven at red-heat & vacuum it. Then partially cool. Add magnesium turnings. Reheat & vacuum to react & distill the potassium. This would separate the gas-generating step from the potassium reduction step.
What you are suggesting might work with KNO3, but certainly not with K2CO3, because the decomposition temperature is far too high. I might try it with KNO3 in the future.
@@EliasExperiments What about using KCl as the source of potassium? Would that (thoroughly dehydrated) react with magnesium, without being violent & without evolving gas?
The thing with KCl is, that the reaction is really slow and both KCl and Mg start boiling at the temperature it is reacting. So you would need an apparatus, that could reflux KCl and Mg, which is more difficult to do.
As always, superb
Thanks again!
If you smoke too much, is that what you do with the bang?
Yeah totally lol
Uhhhh ich lass einen für den Algorithmus da. Volle Eskalation.
Haha, danke Dir!
Fun video! 😄
Thank you!
Richtige Chaoschemiker hier.
Haha wie es halt immer läuft.
Вы станете популярными, у вас очень крутые видео!
Большое спасибо!
One day I should to travel to Germany to make something crazy with you.
Yes, yes! You definetly should! You should come to germany anyway, I guess your future could be very bright here. ;-)
Ihr habt ja noch nen schlimmeren Knall als ich 😂 Abo!
Haha, danke Dir!
That poor pump :D
It should be fine. I don't think anything problematic actually went into it. :D
I was looking around the house. Damn, I am all out of potassium metal. I log on to youtube....
Why buy my potassium metal when I can make my own at home?
Yeah, that's the spirit!
I can so relate to the ‘be careful not to over-tighten xxxxxx or it will break……a few seconds later… 𝒄𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒌!…. 🤦♂️🙄’ thing. Been there..broke that…didn’t like it.
This is so typical, which makes it so funny :D
now you guys just need to scale this up
We are working on it! ;-)
@@EliasExperimentskann euch gerne nen größeren apperat bauen, bräuchte nur das Material, Drehbank und Schweißgerät hab ich
Danke Dir für das Angebot. Schreib mir doch bitte diesbezüglich eine Mail, dass wir besser kommunizieren können. Diese findest Du in der About Section auf meinem Kanal.
nice video bro
Thank you!
C'mon gigachads decompose potassium hydroxide into potassium water and oxygen
I don't think it will work that easy
Hey Elias once again! its funny you made this video, right now, I'm trying to make calcium metal using this same type of setup, but with calcium chloride and aluminum metal.
the aluminum metal forms aluminum chloride which boils off leaving behind calcium metal. I have yet to dry my calcium chloride though, I got it by refining wood ash to get lime, and putting it in muriatic acid to get calcium chloride, so its still dissolved in a tray of water. wish me luck! also, any advice?
Oh wow that sounds highly ambitions. I am not sure this is easily possible with temperatures not far exceeding 1000 °C. But if it works, that would be absolutely incredible. But if you can make it work, I would be highly impressed! I would certainly advise you to just buy the anhydrous calcium chloride. It is very cheap and what you are planning is more then difficult enough, so you basically need any leverage you can get.
@@EliasExperiments I agree, but I've always felt like buying the ingredients is kind of cheating, so I try to avoid it. but I guess you're right, since this is my first attempt, I probably should have just bought some...
anyway, the reaction will take place in a short steel pipe with a cap on one end (the bottom), and a small hole on the other (the top) to let gas escape. I coated the inside with a small amount of oil, which will burn off the oxygen inside the chamber once I put it in the furnace, and it will also seal up the threads with carbon soot (the tiny hole at the top will still be open). it will also coat the inside of the pipe with a layer of carbon soot which should help protect the steel from the reaction and molten metals inside.
any advice, worries or concerns are much appreciated!
If you consider buying anything cheating I guess it might as well be impossible for you to do this without cheating in our society lol. Because you always have to buy something. I mean what's the difference between buying muriatic acid, or calcium chloride?
Besides that I am not sure if this reaction actually does occur to any significant degree below the melting point of steel. I mean it is worth a shot and you really have to make it as hot as you possibly can. I can't wait to hear your results!
@@EliasExperiments I meant to reply back a few days later once I had the results, but I had forgotten! *here are the results of the experiment:* the final result was slightly successful, but looked quite messy, and the preparation could have been done better. I was left with a jumbled mess of metal pieces and unreacted calcium chloride, and it smelled like garlic or like sulfur, so I figured that either that's simply the smell of aluminum chloride, or that the oil I used has some sulfur in it. next I placed it in water to dissolve the calcium chloride, and all that was left was the remaining metal pieces, which were probably mostly aluminum, but they still did barely bubble in water, which is consistent with them being calcium dissolved in aluminum metal. aluminum makes a passivation layer, and would protect the calcium within, even if it was high in calcium, the aluminum oxide passivation would get in the way. one of the pieces is particularly rough in texture, and it bubbles just slightly every time I put it in water, I even held the dish of water up to my ear, and could hear the little bubbles popping. there wasn't enough to do a hydrogen gas flammability test though. my recommendations for repeating this: aluminum should have high surface area such as a fine powder, and the same for the calcium chloride, and they should be thoroughly mixed in their stoichiometric ratio (CaCl2 6.17 : Al 1). I should have just bought the calcium chloride from the store. I should have made sure that the aluminum didn't have a significant passivation layer present when I put it into the reaction chamber, I think it slowed the reaction. I should have used less oil, or simply not used steel which needs protection, instead it would have been best to use a graphite crucible. I should have let the experiment run for longer as well. I think the temperature was about right though it was around 1,500F to 1,900F. I would also recommend using fairly pure aluminum and calcium chloride. make sure to keep oxygen out of the reaction chamber, but you also need to let any aluminum chloride vapor escape because that is the reason the reaction works, one product is a gas, so it escapes and forces the reaction to continue. also make sure most of the moisture is driven out before starting the reaction, and keep in mind that calcium chloride is ridiculously hygroscopic.
Oh awesome! Thank you so much for sharing that! I mean the obvious next step would be to try again with the improvents you suggested. That's how it is in chemistry, you just need to keep trying and trying until you get what you want.
I feel slightly bad for the vacuum pump lol.
Surprisingly it survived that 100 % intact. The oil is still perfectly transparent and colorless and the vacuum is great.
❤❤❤ awesome 😎 please do more videos. 🎉
Thank you! Yes I will ;-)
👏👏👏
;-)
FFP-2 Masken bitte
und bessere Dichtung = bessere Wahrheit.
Und wie immer: Nicht nachmachen!
Ich kann nicht ganz folgen lol
This guys sounds like Chief Inspector Clouseau.
Haha you are not the first person telling me this :D
Cool shit dude.
Thanks!
നിങ്ങൾ ഒരു chemist ആണോ
or
നിങ്ങളുടെ ജോലി എന്താണ്
അതെ, ഞാൻ ഒരു രസതന്ത്രജ്ഞനാണ്, താപ ചാലകമായ റെസിൻ ഫോർമുലേഷനുകൾ വികസിപ്പിക്കുക എന്നതാണ് എന്റെ ഇപ്പോഴത്തെ ജോലി. (എന്റെ പിഎച്ച്ഡിയുടെ വിഷയം)